Redemption
by TrappedInPast
Summary: Sometimes forgiveness is even harder than letting go. Literati. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This is my first fanfiction for Gilmore Girls, so I apologize if the characters are a little off. It might take me some time to get used to them. This story is a work in progress, so I'll try to update often . . . but it may vary.

**Rating:** PG-13, but sometimes language gets kind of strong and their are suggestive (not explict) themes.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything!

Oh, and before it starts, there's some changes in the timing of the whole story. Okay, Rory and Logan have just started exclusively dating, Jess has already opened his publishing house (which Rory doesn't know about), and the Dragonfly Inn is up and running, but Lorelai and Luke aren't together (yet). That about covers it.

By the way, I think Jess and Rory have a dynamic relationship. They're perfect for each other, even their faults are complementary. It's hard to imagine either of them with anyone else. Tristian, Dean, and Logan don't do much for me.

Alright, let's get on with it!

- - - - - - - - -

Damn my stubborn pride.

_He sits near her, watching her tears fall, watching each one shatter into the hardwood like broken glass, feeling each one stab a blade deeper into his heart. She can feel him watching her, and he knows this, but he does not make a move to touch her or comfort her. He sits on the other side of the room, wanting desperately to go to her. She can't tell, for when she glances up at him his face is impassive. He might as well be carved from granite. Maybe he is._

Damn my stubborn pride . . .

_It's the one phrase that keeps circling in his head, swooping down into the folds of his brain until its all he can think about. He would give her the world if he could, but right now he seems incapable of even moving an iota in her direction. The fight started off stupid, dumb, rehashing the same old things they always rehashed and pointless in its monotony. Soon his mouth got the better of him, though, and he had lashed a whip into her soul without meaning to. He doesn't know how to apologize for it._

_She makes no noise, and maybe that is what hurts worst. He remembers when she used to yell at him, push him, storm away from him, but now it seems like she can't resist anymore. He watches the one girl in the world he cares about wither under his horrible gaze that he can't seem to soften, and she buries her face in her hands to escape it. It's his eyes that she can't stand; their intensity bores into her in a way that tells her that he either loves her or hates her, and she can't decide which._

_There are several moments of silence, each one painful and hard to bear. She shakes underneath her scarlet dress that she's wrapped in, lonely and cold. That's when he feels a sensation returning to his legs, like it always eventually does, and he manages to stand up. He wishes very much that he had been able to do this earlier, before these minutes of emptiness, but he will try to repair what he can._

_He whispers her name quietly, and she hears him, but she doesn't look at him. His face is always too much for her to resist. Right now, she doesn't think she can handle him pulling her in again, as he undoubtedly will in a few seconds. There is a fatal attraction between them, a magnetism that neither of them can escape even if they want to, a force that will keep them always searching for each other, and they know it._

_This time he calls her more desperately, and she feels his broad hands on her neck, turning her head so she's forced to stare right into his beautiful brown eyes. She tries to hold on to what he said to her, the spiteful words he lacerated her with, but they are gone as soon as he looks at her like that. She forgets the things she said back, and the tears that still stain her cheeks. When his lips tentatively brush hers, she understands that he is asking her a question, asking for her forgiveness because he can't do it with words, and she answers it by wrapping her arms around him and kissing him back, all the while inhaling his slightly soapy and ashy scent. Soon, their fight is gone, swirling out the open window like smoke, and even though they both know it will be back again to haunt them, they pretend they don't._

_He hears voices in the next room, quiet and restrained, almost as if their owners are afraid to be heard. He wonders what her grandparents think they are doing, and as crazy as it seems, he almost smiles at the thought of them puzzling over the sudden change that will occur between their granddaughter and her boyfriend from the time they entered the study to when they will have left. He catches a word or two spoken by her mother, and he knows they are talking about him, but all of the sudden he feels small hands traveling delicately up the inside of his shirt and he's caught in a vortex, trapped in a tiny world no more than two square feet wide that's composed of only two people._

_In her innocence, she has no idea how crazy she's driving him, and that's part of her allure. He feels her tracing his back muscles with her fingertips, grasping at his biceps, outlining the hard cut of his abdomen. All the while his head is pounding and his heart is rumbling in his chest as his nostrils flare, breathing in what she smells like: something soft, rain maybe, and flowers. This is too much for him to bear, so he kisses her with such breathless power that her hands fall lifeless to the sofa beneath them and she's left dazed. They break apart for a second; he studies her gently and pulls on the tips of her chestnut hair. It's times like these that explain to her why she lets him do what he does. She would die if he wasn't here with her, and she's willing to pay whatever price she has to in order for him to stay._

_He presses his forehead against hers and softly touches his finger to her burning lips. There is a beat where they simply revel in each other's warmth and nearness, but soon she becomes hungry again with a hunger that she's never experienced before and her kisses become ardent and flaming. She brings his palm to her hip and then to her neck, not satisfied with any of its positions until he begins to slide it up her leg. Then she comes so close to him that there is absolutely no space in between their bodies save for their clothes; they are pressed hard to each other so that neither of them has room to breathe, and neither of them want it._

_The room they are in smells like books. He knows it is her grandfather's study. There's something exhilarating about being in her grandfather's study as, for the first time, he begins to touch the hidden body he's thought about for so long. She begins to shake, but the shaking does not quench her passion. He's surprised by how thirsty for him she seems, and how she is not afraid by his own want, even though she has no idea what she's doing. No other girl has ever had quite this effect on him, as cliché as it sounds, and he is suddenly afraid to break her._

_She deserves better than this. She deserves candlelight and poetry, rose petals and scented oil. He knows this. He knows this because he has been thinking about it for months, maybe even longer than that. He tries to wave off this nagging feeling as she begins to tug at the waistband of his jeans, but he can't. He cares about her too much. _

_When he takes her hands off of his pants and lays them gently in her lap before pulling away, the confusion she looks at him with hurts him almost as much as her tears did. He recognizes the fear in her eyes, almost like she thinks that he doesn't want her, and he kisses her one more time to dispel any of her doubts on this issue. When she still looks guilty, like she has done something wrong to drive him away, he begins to stroke her glossy hair. "Not here," is all he can think of to say. "Not like this."_

_She understands now, and he can tell that by the way the gloom disperses from her face to be replaced by a flaring blush, complemented by a shimmering look of anticipation and want in her expression. "Soon," she whispers in a way that sends shivers through his whole bloodstream and makes the hairs on his arms stand on end._

_"Soon," he answers, and he kisses her again, gently this time, like someone sealing a promise too precious to put to paper. She is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen as she sits next to him, her hair piled on her shoulders, her face soft, even her delicate ears are gorgeous. He can't remember ever wanting someone this much, but what startles him most is that he wants her to want him, too; he wants her to want exactly what he wants. He's never cared about that before. He wants her not just in body, but in spirit and soul and heart. He wants her not just today, or tomorrow, but forever._

_He can't tell her these things, of course. He probably never will. He looks at her and hopes that she sees it in his eyes, and by the smile that curves her fantastic lips he thinks that maybe she does. They both know that people are waiting for them in the next room, but neither of them want to lose the intimate moment they've been entrusted with. She leans against him and wraps her arms around him, tempting him to do what he swore he wouldn't, at least not here, but when he takes a deep breath the temptation is gone and nothing but the most brilliant ecstasy is left in its place._

_There's a long silence that's almost sacred; neither of them know how long they lay there. Her fingertips pull on the collar of his dusty green shirt and trace circles on his chest, while his idly wander across her back and tangle in her hair. She begins to laugh without a sound, but he can feel her smile against his skin. He tilts her chin up so that her face meets his._

_"What?" He asks, and the sparkle in her eyes brings an involuntary grin to his lips. Times such as these, when he's so tender and the scowl on his face melts away, absolutely break her heart. She reaches out to trace his mouth and he kisses her finger._

_"I was just thinking, when we do _it_ . . . for real . . . it has to be in a room full of books," she giggles, still hardly above a whisper. _

_He leans back against a bookcase, feeling volumes of novels, all of which he has probably read, sticking into his back, and chuckles. "Huh," he says lightly, digesting what she was saying. "Well, it depends on how quiet we can be. You know they don't like too much noise in a library."_

_This time she's laughing so hard that she can't breathe, laughing about nothing in particular, just laughing with the pure joy of being so close to him. He puts his hand over her mouth to stifle her, but suddenly gets a better idea and covers it instead with his own. _

_It's hard to make himself stop this time when she begins to pull him against her again. Somehow, he untangles himself from her and stands up to walk over to the other side of the room. "I think," he mutters, stuffing his hands in his pockets, "we're only safe from each other if Walt is between us." He looks pointedly at a copy of _Leaves of Grass_ that lies on the desk that separates them. _

_She looks at him lovingly and he has to turn away so that he doesn't say something when his emotions get the better of him. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he says, "Let's go," and swiftly crosses the space between them to yank her up off the couch. She kisses him again, standing up but relying entirely on him for support, and he brushes his lips against her neck._

_"God," he says, not eloquently but sincerely, "What are you doing to me?"_

_"If I knew, I'd tell you," she replies seriously, and then takes his hand and presses it before letting go and standing near the exit. In moments like this one he can't imagine he'd ever be able to make her cry, but he knows the truth all too well. With a sad shake of his head, more to himself than to her, he opens the door and ushers her out before shutting it behind him and prepping himself to face the questioning glances of her family._

_When he does turn toward them, he knows they've been badmouthing him since the second he left. Her grandfather's face is hard and unforgiving, but he is proud to see it is also tinged with a drop of fear. Her grandmother is pulling nervously on the fabric of her upholstered chair, looking at him every once and awhile with something halfway between mortal disdain and utter loathing. Her mother still wants to throw darts at his head. Half of him aches to run out the door and jump in his car, but then he finds her in the corner she has walked to, and her eyes hold such a different emotion than that of the others that he forces himself to stay._

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jess never used alarm clocks. He hated how incessant their blaring is. They had the capability to ruin his whole day in three seconds. Instead, something else would wake him up, something like water being turned on in the bathroom next door or sunlight streaming through his pathetic excuse for blinds. This morning, though, he sat bolt upright in bed at six A.M., his eyes burning as if they had been open for hours without him knowing it.

Damn those dreams. They were memories that came alive again, blazing through his brain at a time when he couldn't defend himself against them. Every time he shook himself out of one, he always found himself empty and lonely for hours. Maybe he was always lonely, and they just made it sharper. He doesn't know.

He felt like he hadn't slept at all. Exhausted, he leaned back into his pillow and closed his eyes, but it was no use. He saw her face as though it had been stamped on the inside of his eyelids. He had to smile a little when he thought of what she'd say about that.

All the time . . . he thought of Rory all the time. Mostly, it was just a dull ache in the back of his throat, a backdrop that he built his life around, but sometimes it took front and center stage, demanding that he fall down and revere this ghost of his past. It hurt him immensely, all of these whys and what ifs that he harbors inside of him. It was his fault that things hadn't worked out; he knew that. She'd been so willing, so eager, to make it right with him, and he'd up and left without giving half a second's notice. He should have gone back to her . . . but surely, surely she'd known he couldn't've?

Groping on his nightstand, he tried to find a book – any book would do – that would take his mind somewhere else. He glanced at the title on a paperback he picked up. _Cry of the Beloved Country._ He had read it a million times, made a thousand notes in the margins, and now he went through it again. There was no other escape for him, but unfortunately this only escape also tied him irrevocably to her through the books.

He had moved to Philadelphia without a clear plan. That was basically how he'd lived his whole life: without a clear plan. The fact that he was now the owner of a publishing house and that he had written a book didn't affect his life much. It was good, he knew, but he was still hopelessly cynical and so buried in literature and memories that this goodness didn't change him. He had grown a little, shaped up his attitude, and learned to regret a lot. He still listened to garage bands and read obscure books, still dressed in t-shirts, jeans, and denim jackets, still smoked, and still had a mouth that raised eyebrows. The one thing that was different, though, was the innermost workings of his being. He had been hurt, too, not just hurt others, and it made him more sensitive to his fellow man.

Sometimes he wondered what he would do if she gave him a second chance. If, somehow, a divine wind blew her to his doorstep and he was given the opportunity to make it work again, what would he say? He didn't have an excuse. The reason he had left was suffocating and pressing, but so wispy and intangible that he couldn't describe it with words. He wondered how different she looked, or if she looked different at all than the last time he'd seen her. The one thing he knew had to be the same was her eyes, pale blue like moonlight and the sky mixed together.

Frustrated, he threw _Cry of the Beloved Country_ against the wall. Some help it was doing him.

Because he knew he wouldn't be able to fall back to sleep, he got up and took a shower, hoping ice cold water would make him think of something else. Eventually, the acuteness of his pain faded away back into that dull ache. He got dressed and went downstairs, ready for another day of work, ready for another day of pretending that nothing could touch him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rory, giggling, yanked her hand out of Logan's grasp as he began to rub his thumb against her palm. Ever since he had found out that her palms were ticklish (a weird "freak of nature" dilemma, he called it), he had been doing it all the time. Acting frustrated but not really altogether displeased, she slapped his shoulder with her menu across the table and then hid her smile by looking down into her drink.

The restaurant was nice. Soft music echoed in the background from a live piano player with long coattails. A huge chandelier sparkled over them, throwing prisms of rainbow light on the salmon-colored walls. A soft carpet, pink like smashed rose petals, embraced her feet in their uncomfortable shoes.

As wonderful as it all was, Rory couldn't help but feel slightly awkward. Logan didn't know everything about her yet. She would have much preferred a huge, greasy burger and a million French fries to the rack of lamb, filet mignon, and cold shrimp that were served here. It had been terribly kind of him to bring her here, though, so she did her best to relax.

"Hey, Ace," he murmured across the table, using his nickname for her that had become so typical to her ear that she didn't even notice it anymore. "You haven't said a word yet. Everything okay?"  
Ever since she and Logan had begun to date steadily, Rory's mouth slowed down. The conversation that had been, if not easy, at least doable between them before seemed to have come to a halt. She was always afraid to say the wrong thing or act the wrong way. He didn't berate her or talk down to her, but a not entirely friendly mocking look would glimmer in his blue eyes and she would blush furiously with painful embarrassment. She tried to talk about books she liked or music she listened to, but in these subjects they had nothing in common. He knew no movies or politicians. He liked to talk about his friends and sports and yachts and business, things she had little to no experience with.

Regardless, it was impossible not to notice the chemistry that flitted between them from the second they had met. He was impossibly arrogant; she was impossibly demure. He saw her as a conquest to be made; the only girl in miles who had not wanted him the moment she saw him. Eventually, he won and she went out with him. She knew it surprised him that she did not fall flat on her face to obey his every command, and this intrigue was part of what kept him around for so long. In the same way, she was surprised that she was attracted to him, regardless of her negative first impression, even though she tried not to show it too much.

"Everything's perfect," she answered, thinking it was so little of a lie that no one would notice. She could get used to this: waiters hanging on her every word, an impossibly handsome boy sitting across from her, candlelight on the table. She could get used to this. She could.

"So I finally read a book you might like," he said awkwardly, as if trying to make some sort of conversation. She looked up with interest. Yale's library was enormous and beautiful, something she felt compelled to make the most of. Logan rarely did.

Seeing she was not going to press him, Logan waited for a refill of his water before clearing his throat and continuing. "It's an Ernest Hemingway. Do you like him? He seems like your type of guy." He chuckled at the end of his joke, expecting her to laugh, too, and he was proud that he had made a stab at talking of her interests.

Rory's blood ran cold. She bit her lip, either to keep herself from yelling or to keep herself from crying. The music suddenly seemed annoying to her and the restaurant was stifling. She wasn't hungry anymore. "No," she said quietly, pushing her iced tea away from her.

He looked at her, surprised, and raised an eyebrow. "No? You don't like Ernest Hemingway? I'm sure he'd like you." He flashed an award-winning smile.

She hated it when these things happened. _He likes you . . ._ She could still here that voice saying it, a voice more husky than Logan's, a voice full of sarcasm and cajoling. She pressed her eyes closed and shook her head, willing herself not to see a finely chiseled face and waving dark hair, but especially hoping that she wouldn't remember his piercing brown eyes.

"I don't want to talk about it anymore," she replied, pushing a leaf of lettuce around her salad plate with her fork. She tried to focus on Logan, on his hundreds of charms and the flaws that merely added to his perfection, but she couldn't. She was suddenly sitting on a bridge, staring out into black water, feeling his presence by her, wanting so desperately to touch him, but too afraid to.

"Did good ol' Ernest do something to offend you?" Logan bit into a roll and chewed and swallowed like he didn't have a care in the world. She glanced up at him, at his perfectly styled blonde hair and his collared dress shirt and sweater, and she suddenly felt sick.

"I'm sorry, I have to go," she whispered, wishing with her whole heart that this didn't happen to her anymore, trying to make herself believe that she had moved on. It was no use. In her mind's eye, she saw snow blanketing a town square. She was being walked backward and pinned against the gazebo. She felt his lips assaulting hers.

In her haste, she stood up and knocked over her drink on the table. Her eyes flashed. Logan reached out to hold her back, stumbling over himself with confused apologies, but she was gone. "Ace!" She heard behind her, and the fact that she didn't care sent tears coursing down her cheeks.

As she walked down the quiet New Haven streets, she took out her cell phone from her purse and stared at it. There, in her address book, was the number to Luke's. It danced before her, taunting her, teasing her. Her anger at him, at how he had thrown her life off course, was nothing compared to the burning in her heart that told her how much she missed him.

When was the last time she had talked to someone like him? When had she sat down and had a conversation about _Dead Souls_, or Bjork, or anything that resembled something that mattered to her? She couldn't remember. All she could think of was the countless afternoons they had spent upstairs in Luke's apartment, her head on his chest and his hand on the back of her neck, as he had read to her from dozens of books and she had laughed at the rise and fall of his skin as he breathed.

There were times when she didn't think about him for weeks, when he faded into background noise for her. She wouldn't have been able to survive otherwise. When he had shown up again half a year ago, she completely blocked out their reunion in her head. She remembered it now, and began to cry harder.

Fingers shaking, she punched the "Send" button. The phone rang for what seemed like an eternity. She checked her delicate chain watch. Ten o'clock. Luke was usually in bed by now. Mortified, she groped for the button to hang up. It was too late.

"Hello?" A rough, groggy voice greeted her on the other end of the line. For a moment, she thought about pretending to be a telemarketer, but knew that would be even worse.

"Hey, Luke, it's Rory. Sorry I woke you up."

She heard the sound of sheets rustling as, she assumed, Luke sat up in a more comfortable position. There was a loud exhaling, and then, "You didn't wake me up."

Laughing, and then doubling over because it hurt to laugh after she had been crying, she said, "You've always been a bad liar."

A pause. "Yeah, well."

He didn't hurry her or ask what she wanted. He seemed to sense that she was acutely uncomfortable, and she was grateful for the silence. She still didn't know she was going to say it until the words came out of her mouth and into his ear. "Um, Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you . . . do you have a number I could reach Jess at?"

She regretted it instantly. _What are you thinking?_ He had left her, didn't she remember that? Didn't she remember how heartbroken she had been, still was? Didn't she remember that she had wanted to lock away the precious moments inside of her, forget the bad, and never speak to him again?

Ah, but that was a lie. She knew what it felt like to lie to herself.

He was surprised. She could tell. He didn't say anything for a moment. Then, entirely awake now, he answered, "Hold on." There was a banging noise, some swearing, and the flipping of pages. "Here it is."

He waited, as if wanting her to reassure him that she really wanted it. He knew the history, and he knew how much pain Rory had to be in to be willing to put herself through this, so he wanted to make sure.

"Okay, I have a pen." She didn't, really. She knew herself well enough to know that it would be memorized the moment she heard it.

He gave the number to her gruffly, but tenderly in a fatherly way, as if he felt like he was unfairly punishing her. She was right; each digit was eternally fastened to her memory. The feeling that spread through her was indescribable. She finally had something tangible to connect with her past, and she didn't like it.

"Thanks," she said quietly.

"No problem." He was silent for a moment, giving her a chance to tell him what was going on if she wanted to. She didn't. "Okay, if that's all, I'm going to go back to the sleep you didn't wake me up from."

She laughed again. She couldn't help it. "Okay."

"Okay. Goodnight." Another beat of waiting, and then he hung up. She didn't do the same until the dial tone screamed in her ear. Then she returned her phone to her purse and hailed a cab as tears started to fall again.

- - - - - - - - - -

Thanks for taking the time to read it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Thanks, everyone, for the support I got on the last chapter. I was a little worried about some of the characterization and stuff, and I still am, but I'll do the best I can. Sorry if there are any grammar mistakes . . . and this one's kind of short (it didn't flow right with the next part of the story). I hope you like it!

**Disclaimer:** And once again, nothing is mine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was two in the morning. Rory heard Paris' thick snores from ten feet away and watched as the green lights on her digital clock blinked the next minute. Logan had called at least a dozen times, but he hadn't stopped by. She wondered why.

It was cold outside, the end of a bitter winter. Early March night air fogged up the windows when it came into contact with the warm air of the interior. She looked through its haze to see the shape of a tree dancing in the wind. She wasn't even slightly tired.

On a sudden impulse, she got up, stuffed her feet into slippers, pulled on her bathrobe, grabbed her phone, and left her dorm. The hallway was dark and deserted; as she went outside light from one lamp cast everything in an eerie glow. Her hair stuck to her face. She shivered.

She was insane, and she knew it, but she was being held captive by a ghost from long ago and it was her right to be free. She couldn't move on, otherwise. She also knew that if she didn't do it now, she never would. And if he were angry with her . . . well, what right did he have to be angry? How in the _hell_ could he be angry?

She keyed in the numbers and glared at them for a moment, trying to gather all of her furious feelings that she had harbored for the past year and a half in her heart. They roared in their ugliness, filling up her whole body, and refreshed with vindictive anger, she pressed her green button.

As it rang, she thought of a thousand things, of anything except him. She thought of how stupid it was for the windows at Yale to still be two decades old, and how new lamps needed to be set up. She wondered if she had forgotten to do her Lit homework.

". . . Who in the hell is this?"

She started. She hadn't been ready. What had she been thinking? It was his voice, the voice she adored, the one she replayed over and over again in her head like it were a precious CD. It was him, he was alive, he was okay, and all of her righteous fury was gone. She was lost and alone like a little puppy in the rain.

"If I have to ask again . . . I'm shooting you through the phone," he went on, and she could see him lying in some bed somewhere, raking a hand through his messy hair. The breath caught in her throat. She was terrified. Why couldn't she have just left what was over alone? What kind of sick dementia did she have?

"No one," she said quickly, not knowing how stupid that was at the moment because she was so rattled. She tried to hang up but, unbelievably, her fingers wouldn't move. She began to breathe far too fast and her heart slammed against her ribcage. "I'm sorry."

There was absolute silence on the other end. Finally, her arm began to work and she tried to find the off button. She was starting to cry again. She had turned into a blubber bag.

Then, choked with disbelief, all sleepiness gone, she heard, ". . . Rory?"

The way he said her name had always melted all of her defenses. It was the one word that he actually made it sound like he liked, something he treated respectfully, a word he almost seemed to enjoy. He said it carefully, slowly, and now, painfully. She heard his ragged breathing, and noticed it matched hers.

"Wha . . . Are you okay?"

She swallowed and sat down on a bench because her legs were too weak to stand. "I'm fine." Despicable liar. There was half a minute without words. "How about you?"

He must have gotten out of bed. She heard him walking around. She imagined him in a room full of books, and her heart ached. "I . . . I guess I'm not dead," he answered.

She sighed shakily. "That makes you luckier than Walt Whitman," she whispered, remembering the night in her grandfather's study. From the way he didn't say anything, she knew he was thinking about it, too.

Finally, he said, "Why did you call me, Rory?"

He had always been like that. Straight. Blunt. To the point. He didn't dance on the edges, but went into the thick of it. She tried to take his example. "I need to talk to you."

He didn't ask what sort of moron would call someone at two in the morning, like she had thought he would. He didn't even want to know where she had gotten his number from. "Huh," was all he said. It was so familiar to her that she smiled despite herself.

She pulled at the tie on her bathrobe and began to talk, so fast and babbling that she knew she would be lucky if he could just understand her. "I . . . I . . . well the guy I'm dating talked about Ernest Hemingway today. Tonight. A few hours ago. He wouldn't let it drop, and I just lost it. I don't really know why. Well, I know why, but it's stupid. I need . . . I should be . . . I mean, any guy has the right to talk about Ernest Hemingway. And I need to let whoever wants to talk about Ernest Hemingway talk about Ernest –"

He didn't put her out of her misery like she had hoped he would, but secretly known he wouldn't. He didn't say a thing. She took a deep breath and tried to regroup. An owl was sitting on the top of her dorm building, and when it fluttered away, she spoke again. "I need you to tell me . . . I need you to tell me that you've moved on and you don't care about me anymore."

She waited nervously for his response while her heart screamed in protest at her stupidity. Her head fought it back furiously. This was the only way she'd have a real chance with Logan. She couldn't be sitting around waiting for some guy who would never straighten up enough to really want her for more than two seconds. She had to be let go by his memory.

Jess had never told her that he loved her while they were dating. She tried to take comfort in the fact, tried to tell herself that was proof that he had never truly loved her at all. It didn't work. Half of her was so upset at the idea that she nearly broke down, and the other half whispered to her that she knew he had. She had been able to tell from the looks he gave her over that year, even before they dated.

She watched a cloud begin to cover the moon, but didn't prod him, because she really didn't want him to say it. _You might not want him to say it,_ she thought,_ but you need him to._

"Rory . . ." He whispered like he was pleading, begging her for something, but she had no idea what. Her stomach turned as he sighed heavily and muttered something that she didn't understand. "Why are you doing this?"

It wasn't what she was looking for. She didn't know exactly _what_ she was looking for, but this wasn't it. Her voice trembled. "Release me," she said quietly. "Let me get on with my life." Tears fell into her lap and some splashed on the concrete beneath her, by her fuzzy pink slippers.

She wanted to be with him so horribly that it was an actual physical ache. She remembered how he felt, how he smelled, how he tasted. She wanted that again. She wanted the easy talk between them, the laughter, the kissing. Her heart blocked out the fighting and crying, but even that didn't bother her.

"Rory," he said after a long moment of silence that lasted for an uncountable amount of time, "Rory . . . I've moved on. I don't care about you anymore. Not like that."

She tried to hold in her sobs, but she couldn't. They spilled out of her like water, although she managed to remain mostly silent. Without saying another word, she hung up.

_Ashes to ashes and dust to dust._

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The moment the line went dead, Jess slammed his fist into the wall. "Dammit!" He didn't care who heard him or who he woke up. His head was going at a thousand miles an hour, unable to slow itself down, spiraling dangerously out of control.

He pressed his nose against the cold glass of his window, trying to cool down his brain, but it didn't help. He was dazed. What in the hell had just happened? Had she just called? Finally? Had he just frigging told her that he didn't care about her anymore? He wasn't into mushy sentimentality stuff, but how could he have said _that_?

And then he remembered why. He remembered her voice, beautiful but breaking, as she had begged him. _Release me . . . Let me get on with my life_. He bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. He had lied for her sake. A bitter grin crossed his face. He had lied and told her he didn't like her just to make her happy.

He didn't deserve her. Not anymore. He never even had in the first place. She had been given to him for a brief second, just so that he could feel a cool breeze across his skin and taste what things could be like, but he had known she would be snatched from him. That was what it came down to. She needed a man who would be there for her all the time, someone who could always understand and give her the entire universe when she asked for it. He couldn't do that.

She had been crying. He was fairly certain of that. An automatic response went off in his heart and he wanted to be there for her to talk to, to spill her guts to, for her to be comforted by. Usually Rory kept everything deep inside of her until, one day, her dam would burst and her whole soul would come gushing out of her. Not many people knew this. He wondered if there was someone at Yale who had realized that about Rory and could hold her. Part of him wanted there to be, but the vast majority was scathingly jealous at the idea.

It was too late for him now. It was too late for them. Time had once embraced them and held them, but suddenly it dropped them and moved on, and now they couldn't find each other again. She would go on to someone who was better than he was, someone who could make her happy, and he would try to do the same. He wasn't wired to ever feel like that again, he knew, and maybe he would never find anyone to stay with, but would spend his whole life only stroking hair in the darkness of the night which hid his shame, only kissing round lips underneath sheets which covered his pain. Whenever a woman stopped by the publishing house and hit on him, whenever he took any girl up to his room ever since he had left Stars Hollow, he couldn't close his eyes during the whole time they were together. If he did, her face would suddenly become Rory's, and it terrified him with excruciating regret.

Angrily, he kicked his chair over and leaned against his desk, his head bent, his hands spread on its surface. He didn't need any more reminders. Whatever there had been between them was over. His mind kept playing her words around and around in his head like a recording . . . _The guy I'm dating . . . the guy I'm dating . . ._

He took out a notebook and wrote her a letter that he tried to explain himself in, tried to tell her how empty he felt and how sorry he was. It was just another sheet of paper in a spiral full of dozens of such letters, none of which he had ever sent. Tired, now, not just from a lack of sleep but also from holding on too long to her, he went downstairs into the publishing house, lit a fire in the fireplace, and burned the entire notebook. As he watched flames eat up the only emotions he had ever allowed himself to have, the only phrase that he could think of was _"All's well that ends well." _Aching but pretending he wasn't, he went back upstairs, stood his chair up from where it still laid on the floor, and collapsed into it. It wasn't until then that another quote was retrieved from the reaches of his brain, one he had read years ago by Alexei Tolstoi. He closed his eyes and whispered it to himself in the darkness. ". . . I am running away from something dreadful and cannot escape it. I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor . . . it is myself I am weary of and find intolerable and a torment. I want to fall asleep and forget myself and cannot, I cannot get away from myself."  
He wished he hadn't lied.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** I think I kind of scared some people with the last chapter. Sorry, guys, I didn't realize how . . . _final_ it sounded. Don't worry. Actually, I've been meaning to warn you . . . this story might turn out to be kind of long. Not your typical five or six chapter flick. But thanks for the great reviews, and thanks for reading it even if you don't review.

**Disclaimer:** I think I'm going to stop putting these and just say this applies to the rest of the story - I own nothing except for original characters I might invent later.

Feedback is appreciated!

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"Hello?" Jess answered the phone but his attention wasn't entirely on it. He was reading a manuscript of an up and coming novelist, and he was right in the middle of a thought that went something like: _Crap. This is all crap. Even Hawthorne would be embarrassed._ A cup of coffee that had been poured by one of his coworkers – and which he wasn't even considering drinking, he hated coffee – grew cold on the corner of the table he was sprawled out over. He scrawled a note on a sheet of paper under his elbow, having to do it with his left hand because the phone was in his right. Even though it was beside the point, he was somewhat proud at how his writing was legible with the wrong hand and wondered if he was ambidextrous.

"Hey, uh, Jess," came Luke's voice, rough and gravelly from whatever he had done in his teenage years, or maybe just from inhaling burger grease all the time. Jess kneaded his forehead with his fingers and dropped his pen. He didn't mind hearing from Luke, although he'd be the last to admit it. Their relationship was not exactly like Aladdin and Jasmine, or Harry and Sally, but they had ironed out some of their differences over the past couple of years. Yeah, he still saw Luke as a sadly ignorant and uncultured diner boy, but that was okay.

"Hey," he said, leaning back into his chair, and noticing that the ceiling needed to be painted.

"I have a favor to ask you." There wasn't any small town chit chat. Luke had given up on that a long time ago, and they both hated it, anyway.

"Yeah?"

"Well . . . Caesar has to go out of town this week . . . for his mother's birthday or something . . . personally, I just think he wants to go to the chili eating contest down in Pennsylvania, but whatever. And Lane has to go somewhere with her band, so I'm pretty short staffed." There was a pause as something dropped and Luke did his version of a swear. It made Jess laugh, and he tried to stifle it in his hand.

"Anyway . . . jeez . . . dammit, Taylor . . . I know you're busy, but . . . _dammit_, Taylor, wait . . . you call your own hours, and I was wondering if you could take a week off and come help me. Trust me, I explored every other option before asking . . . I'm going to shoot you, Taylor!"  
Jess was instantly torn. He could easily say no, which didn't seem like that bad of an idea, and then a knife split through him as he remembered how he was hell bent on avoiding Rory. But she'd be at Yale, and Luke had done a lot for him . . . against every single instinct Jess Mariano had in his entire twenty-year-old body, the need to repay some of his debts was messing with his mind. Besides, he was actually kind of sick of reading manuscripts. And if he just stayed in the back, missing Lorelai wouldn't be too hard. He looked at the dump he was sitting in and made up his mind.

"Yeah, sure." He said it nonchalantly, as if he didn't care, but he was somewhat happy about going to a place where there was air to breathe again. God, what was wrong with him?

"That's it? 'Yeah, sure?'"

His temper starting to fray, Jess sighed. "Do you want me to send you a smoke signal or a postcard with my coat of arms? I said yes."

Luke almost sounded happy. It would be a little too much to expect, so Jess wasn't jumping to any conclusions when his uncle answered, "Good. That's good. See you tomorrow?"

Jess looked around him one more time, his eyes lingering on the cold coffee. "See you tonight."

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The music was blasting and the windows were rolled down. This was how Rory liked to drive. She'd found the freedom of acting like her mother sometimes: wild, uncharted, uncontrollable. Her fingers danced on the steering wheel as she whispered along to the song that was rocketing in her ears, unwilling to scream it just because she wanted to hear all the other things: the cold March breeze, the calling of birds returning from the South, Logan's laughter.

Because, certainly, he could not stop laughing. He had never seen her like this when she was in her element, completely untamable, her hair tangling behind her in the wind that whizzed by her face. She was beautiful to him in that moment, beautiful in a way another girl had never been, and she became even more of an enigma that he couldn't figure out. She hadn't mentioned her outburst a couple of weeks back a the restaurant again, but suddenly she was kissing him, holding him, yelling at him, dancing with him Her entire personality had been bathed with passion; she was on fire, explosive, and he couldn't stop her. He didn't want to. He was just along for the ride.

She sighed happily and leaned back in her seat before turning down the radio. "I love that song," she said breathlessly, her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling. She knew Logan had never heard it before. She knew she wasn't as happy as she seemed. She felt like she was drunk, on what she didn't know. Had someone stolen into her room and injected a powerful drug into her veins? No . . . just straight into her heart. She closed her eyes for a nanosecond and willed herself not to think about it, the smile never leaving her face. Logan grazed her elbow with his fingertips, and she directed her grin to him before focusing on the road again.

All the things that were so familiar to her – asphalt, yellow paint, trees, a big blue sky – looked different today. She couldn't place exactly why, or if this difference was a good or bad thing. Deep inside her heart, she felt strangely numb, like she could be speared and not feel a thing. It made her invincible, unafraid, and daring.

Logan had been to Stars Hollow once or twice and had even met her mother, but he hadn't really gotten to know her hometown. Since it was spring break and he had canceled his trip with the Life and Death Brigade, they had decided now was as good a time as any to go. She wondered what everyone would think of him, but immediately she knew. Arrogant, pretty boy who had never been forced to use his hands. Know-it-all. Sweet for the most part, yes, but quick to talk and slow to listen. Obsessed with living for the moment and forgetting to look inside of himself once and awhile. He probably didn't even know who Ayn Rand was . . .

She pressed her forehead with her hand. There was no way Kirk would be thinking that Logan didn't know who Ayn Rand was. That was Rory's own assessment, not the town's, her own thought that she had just let slip out of its covered porch into the dangerous urban metropolis that was her brain.

She had to stop comparing them. It wasn't fair. They were two completely different people with absolutely nothing in common save their gender. Logan was charming, blonde, successful, suave. He liked her, he had to, or else he wouldn't be doing this. Yes, she worried that he might cheat on her if given the chance, but one glance into his ocean blue eyes made her forget all of his vices. He sweet talked her easily, surprised her rarely, and talked to her superficially. She hoped that someday their relationship would deepen to the point where they could be vulnerable and open to each other. It just wasn't there yet. He still gave her butterflies in her stomach and was a great kisser. His kisses depended on his mood. Sometimes they were rough and desperate, sometimes soft and gentle. There was nothing _wrong_ with him.

As much as she tried to stop it, though, the other side of the wall showed his face. He wasn't interested in being charming. He was blunt one moment and cryptic the next; he was a puzzle she couldn't piece together. A brush of his fingertips had left her dizzier than whole makeout sessions with Logan did. His mind, although he hid it, was always working, always observing, always processing. He'd be in the corner of a room reading a book, invisible, but listening to everything around him. And his kisses, instead of depending on how he felt, catered to her mood. If she was slow and tender, he would be, too, but if he found hunger or permission in her eyes he would raid her mouth like it was a treasure trove that only he could plunder, like she was made of honey. A fog would entrap her for hours after he got his hands on her. She wouldn't be able to think or –

God. This was insane. She had been eighteen, and it was done. He told her that two weeks ago. She remembered the exact words she had instructed him to use, and he had done it. There wasn't even regret in his voice. She could see him standing in his room, looking boredly at his bookshelf while she spilled her heart, and then trying to get rid of her as fast as possible. That was most likely exactly what had happened.

She kicked him out of her mind in that second and turned to look at Logan, who was talking on his cell to Finn. He turned and grinned at her and, happily, she felt the butterflies in her stomach again.

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_It looks exactly the same_, Jess thought with something between awe and disgust. And . . . no . . . the baseball, the lone baseball he had refused to return to the high school and thrown up on top of the building that currently housed Taylor's soda shop instead, was still there. It was too much. He shook his head with smirk of disbelief tinged with just a bit of pride.

His car was still a hunk of junk on wheels that he adored. It got him where he needed to go and he loved it because of that. As it crawled into a space behind Luke's Diner, out back where Luke kept his truck, he patted it fondly. Night was falling, and a strange, watery lavender color covered the whole town. Putting it into park and yanking the key out of the emission, he tilted his head back and examined the "alleyway" right in back of the kitchen. He swallowed heavily, not moving, hardly breathing, stock still, remembering.

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_She shyly glances over at him as she walks into Luke's, just like she does every morning, and leans against the bar, again, just like she does every morning. He pours her a cup of coffee and gives it to her; she sets her backpack on a stool and gratefully accepts it. They don't exchange words, just looks, and then he is gone, bringing plates of food to other customers. He waits for a second . . . ah, there it is. He can feel her eyes on him as he moves around the diner. She thinks she's being quiet, discreet, and that he doesn't notice, but Jess grew up on the hard streets of New York City and can take the pulse of a room in ten seconds. He can always tell when someone's watching him. It's a survival skill he's learned out of necessity and perfected out of pleasure. Right now, he likes the way she can't seem to take her eyes away from him. He doesn't call her on it; she's been doing it for months, for a year even, and he never has. He never will._

_He's better at watching people than she is. He's doing it right back to her, and he knows she has no idea. As her attention is taken away from him when Luke asks her something, he slides his eyes over to her and admires her soft brown hair and soft thin body. He should have been better at reading the signs when they came earlier, but now it's too late and she has him wrapped around her finger. He hates to admit it, but it's true. No one ever told him that danger could be packaged in a prep school uniform with the label of "town's virginal princess." _

_Eventually, she stands up. Her mother is not with her; Lorelai must have had to go into the Inn early today. Jess is glad for that, because it means that Rory's focus in only on him, which is a sensation he likes. Caesar is donning his uniform behind the counter, so Jess unties his apron and hangs it up on a tack. "I'm going to school!" He yells across the room to his uncle, who is at another table taking an order. He receives a brisk nod of acquiesce before Luke looks away again. He ducks behind the curtain on the pretext of getting his bag, and with his eyes he motions for her to follow him. Before he would have wondered if that was something she would dare do, but now he knows her too well and he's beginning to think he might have a hold over her, too. She appears next to him a few seconds later, timidly glancing up at him from beneath thick fawn-colored lashes._

_"Hey," he says, lacing his fingers through her own and backing her up so she's pinned against the wall. She doesn't look afraid, and he smiles when he catches the anticipation in her face. They've only been dating for a week, so this sort of physical affection is still new to her, but he knows she likes it and she knows he knows._

_"Hi," she whispers, freeing one arm from his grasp to wrap it around him and pull him closer against her. He loves it when she does this, when he can tell she wants him, when she surrenders to the power of their attraction for each other. He loves stealing kisses from her behind the curtain in the dark, and he loves the soft lavender scent of her hair as they are crushed to one another._

_Just as his head begins to lower tantalizingly toward hers, he hears stomping a few feet away on the other side of the curtain and knows his uncle is coming to his apartment for something. He's always been fast on his feet, and today is no different. Immediately, he grabs her hand and yanks her past the storeroom, behind the kitchen, and out into the alley out back. She laughs when he shuts the door and holds her against the wall. Their coats smash together as she hugs him, her face turned up and her pale blue eyes sparkling._

_"Hi again," he says confidently, unbuttoning her coat as she traces his jaw line. He's never done this before, and she looks at him with confusion, but he doesn't detect her wanting him to stop. Slowly, he unzips his jacket and slips her hands around his waist, against the thin fabric of his black t-shirt. Then he wraps his own arms around her underneath her coat, feeling the scratchy material of her uniform on his wrists. It's warmer this way, better, and he feels his blood pounding in his ears as her fingers begin to dance on his sides._

_She's the one who kisses him this time, carefully, because she is a perfectionist and she doesn't want to do anything wrong. It's cute but annoying, and he teaches her this by taking over the kiss she started and ravaging her mouth, leaving her breathless, showing her that fast and furious sometimes works better than perfect. He runs his hands up and down her warm back under her coat, finally settling them on her hips as he pulls away. She clings to him for support and, testing her limits because he knows she wants him to, he begins to kiss her neck. The soft, murmuring noises of contentment she makes send his whole body on alert._

_He knows he has to go slow with her. She's not ready for anything yet. If she were anyone else, literally _any_ other girl on the whole frigging planet, he would take her right now in the alley. But because she's Rory, that thought disgusts him and he pushes it out automatically, denying his own desire that particular outlet and instead focusing on her. She's weakening to the point where she would have fallen if he wasn't holding her, and he feels her balling his shirt in her hands. He can tell she wants to kiss him back, to make him as weak as he's making her, but all she can do is hold on. He wants to tell her that she does the same thing to him by just standing there; he doesn't need anything else._

_She suddenly presses her lips to his shoulder, gently, as if afraid he will push her away, and even through his shirt the contact makes him freeze. It's such an innocent, beautiful gesture, and no girl he's ever been with has done it before. She can't know that he has a scar right underneath where her mouth is, but he does, and when her lips touch it he can hardly move._

_She stops and looks at him, a little bit afraid, and she whispers, "I'm sorry. Is that okay?"_

_He tries to push away the sudden deep, serious feelings that course through him with a laugh, and he succeeds. "Is that okay? God, Rory, you're hilarious. Come 'ere." Then his lips hungrily find hers again, and they stand like that for several minutes. Before he can stop himself, one of his hands slide up underneath her shirt and touch the sacred skin of her stomach. It's soft, tender, delicate, pale, beautiful, and he knows no other boy has ever touched her there before. Burned by this intense realization as well as by its loveliness, he pulls back as if he has touched scalding water. "I . . . I don't know what . . . I . . ."_

_She smiles, a half scared smile, but a real smile nonetheless, and she catches his lips again and tangles her fingers through his hair before stepping away to straighten her clothes._

_"Rory," he moans, half thinking she means to be doing this to him but knowing she doesn't. If she had any idea what torment she was putting him in, she wouldn't let him near her. That's just who she is._

_The naïve way she looks at him seals his assessment. "What?"_

_He shakes his head, amazed by her innocence, but enraptured with it, too. "Never mind," he says wrapping his arms around her and leaning so close to her ear that he actually feels her tremble. "Here." He holds out a book to her that he has taken from his back pocket, and she looks at the title and snatches it from him._

_"_A Prayer for Owen Meany!"_ She exclaims, immediately opening it and glancing over the first page. He grins a triumphant grin._

_"So you _are_ a John Irving fan," he says, pressing his leg against her hip. This distracts her for a moment, and she looks up at him in a way that tells him she is both annoyed at his interruption and eager to feel him against her. In the end, her eagerness wins._

_"Yes, maybe," she says mischievously, pressing the book to her chest. It is caught between them as he kisses her. "Thank you," she says, serious now, and then she picks up her backpack and runs to the path that leads to the main street._

_"Where do you think you're going?" He calls after her, well aware that all of his friends in New York would mercilessly mock him for being so whipped, but that's just how it is at the moment, no matter how much he tries to hide it._

_"Where do _you_ think I'm going?" She retorts, and then, smiling, she's gone, leaving him leaning against the wall. God, she's amazing. He thinks about running after her and stealing another kiss, but he doesn't. And, damn it, in the heat of the moment he gave her that book before he was finished with it._

_It's sad, what she does to him, so why can't he stop grinning?_

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"Hey, Luke," Jess said easily. He never called him "Uncle Luke" or any other stupid name; it had become a comfortable understanding between them that they were both on a first name basis. In fact, the few times Jess had used the title "Uncle," it had been as a retort dripping with sarcasm. That was how it worked best anyway.

"How are ya?" Luke asked gruffly, his eyes opening in only mild shock when he turned around from lugging a crate into his apartment and saw his nephew standing in the middle of his kitchen. It wasn't the first time he just appeared, and it definitely wouldn't be the last, so Luke decided, once again, that he'd just prefer not to know.

"Still alive," came Jess' typical response. He walked over to help, and the two of them pushed the crate over into a corner without Jess asking what was in it. They stood next to each other awkwardly, not knowing what to say.

"I guess you should get unpacked," Luke finally muttered uneasily, but then his eye caught the empty duffel bag on the spare bed and realized that his suggestion came too late. "Oh. Well, I have to get back to the diner."

Jess cleared his throat and tried not to look around him too much. There were too many memories. This might have been a bad idea, coming back, but he was a stubborn hardass and he knew it. He refused to allow himself to be chased away by ghosts. "I'll come with you."

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Lorelai had to smile when she walked into her kitchen and saw Rory sitting there over a mug of coffee. It seemed so normal, so _right_, when her daughter came back for a visit. The house was always strangely empty without her. She never told anybody about the nights she went into Rory's bedroom, staring at the empty bed silhouetted in the moonlight, sitting in a chair for hours and listening to the awkward quietness of the room that resulted from the absence of Rory's breathing.

"Mom, what do you think about Logan?" Rory asked, looking up from her coffee to stare inquisitively into her mother's eyes. Lorelai took a moment to decide whether she should lie or tell the truth, but the answer was always the same when it involved Rory. Lying was futile.

"I actually think he gets his nails manicured," she whispered, knowing that Logan would finish unpacking the Jeep any minute and be back inside. "And I swear he gets his jeans dry cleaned. Apparently he just forgot to audition for Richie Rich." Okay, so that had been a little harsh, but she, having grown up much the same way, knew how to recognize someone who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It was so obvious he had been pampered his whole life. Rory opened her mouth to say something, but she cut her off. "High points: he looks like a Ken doll, he has a smile that belongs on a commercial, he seems to have looked up the word 'confident' in the dictionary once or twice, and he's crazy about you." She gave her best 'whatever-makes-you-happy-dear' smile and sat down across from Rory.

"He's definitely not dull," Rory said, stroking the handle of her mug. "I really like him." She swallowed and looked up into her mother's expectant face that was obviously waiting for the rest of her sentence. Sighing, she gave it. "It's just . . . we don't have many interests in common. He's only on the newspaper because of his dad. It's not like he enjoys it or anything. And he thinks he owns the world."

Lorelai scrunched up her nose. "Have you checked the newest Monopoly edition? He just might." She meant it as a joke, but sadly, she could imagine Huntzberger Monopoly with surprising clarity. She shook her head.

"He's different than his dad, though. He really has a personality. He's brave," Rory went on. Lorelai watched her pull on the light blue cardigan she wore over a white shirt. "I don't know. I guess I'll have to wait. I just don't know."

She covered her daughter's hand with her own and squeezed it. "Don't rush it, babe," was the only piece of advice she was willing to give. When she looked into Rory's eyes, though, she wanted to say _"Don't do this to yourself. Don't settle."_

A thump in the hallway alerted them both to Logan's return. He deposited two large suitcases in the front entryway and then strode into the kitchen before taking a seat next to Rory at Lorelai's urging. She watched the way he blindly groped for the fingertips of her daughter without looking into her face first, immediately assuming that she'd want to hold his hand. All of her motherly instincts were on fire, but she hid them.

"Well, here you are all cleaned up and gelled down," she said to him, a fairly fake smile on her face. "And I was so looking forward to the pink spandex and leopard print cowboy hat Rory told me about."

He chuckled, but didn't carry on her banter. Her fake smile fading, Lorelai grabbed Rory's cup of coffee from her and took a sip. "So," Rory said suddenly, aware of the awkward silence and hoping to hide it before Logan noticed it, "So, you have to understand that mom and I never keep food at home. Unless you want to eat stale poptarts – "

"We're out of those," Lorelai interjected.

"Okay, well, we can order Chinese or pizza if we want to stay home."

Logan shook his head. "I'm here to see the town, I thought."

Lorelai stared at him coolly. _So you think, big boy. Good for you. _Then she smiled again. "Well, I'd suggest we go to the Ritz." She raised her eyebrows suggestively at Rory, ignoring Logan's confusion. God help him, he actually thought she meant _the_ Ritz.

Rory nodded. "Oh, definitely."

As they walked to the door and Lorelai put on a light jacket, she watched her daughter and Logan talk in the hallway. He was telling her about some crazy stunt he had pulled once with one of his friends and she was laughing. Sadly, Lorelai noticed, the laugh didn't reach her eyes.

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	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** Wow. Yeah, reviews definitely make me feel good :) I have some of the story finished already, so updates can come kind of fast right now. There really isn't much else to say . . . I think this chapter's pretty self-explanatory. Hope you like it.

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Luke's Diner was full of the average amount of customers. There were a few empty tables, and the people that were there were all familiar faces. Rory was arrested in midstep by Babette, who was on her way out and crushed Rory against her ample chest before saying, "You hafta come over and have lunch with Morrie and me before you go," and continuing her exit. She glanced once at Logan and gave Rory a "that's a sweet piece of meat" look, but Rory politely ignored it. Miss Patty would be worse to deal with. Luckily, after a quick scan of the diner, Rory confirmed she wasn't there.

She breathed in the familiar scent of butter, coffee, and grease that had basically raised her. This was something she always missed when she was in New Haven. She had tried to make the acquaintance of a few people who worked at various restaurants, hoping that maybe she could have her own Luke-like relationship with someone there, but it just wasn't possible. Everything here was comforting, from the cheap peeling table-tops to the old plastic chairs and worn booth seats. Even the white linoleum floor was like heaven to her. Smiling happily, she seated herself smack in the middle of the room and waited for her mom and Logan to catch up.

Logan was taking it all in stride, and for this she was proud of him. She'd been with him to some seedy dance joints and even a bar or two (although, she comforted herself, she hadn't had any alcohol), but never to a homey diner like this one. He didn't falter once, even when Kirk walked up to him and mistook him for a Hollywood screenwriter ("Please," Kirk begged, "If you would just look at my rough cut, I'm sure you would see that my artistic work is greatly undervalued"). She sought out his hand this time under the table, and was rewarded with a relieved grin.

Her mother was starving and impatiently tapping the table. Rory looked around the room, too, and saw that Luke was nowhere to be found. He was probably in the back. Everyone looked served, though, so apparently he hadn't been gone long and would be back again soon. With a pang, she hoped he wouldn't mention her late night phone call to him a few weeks ago. Then she reminded herself that this was Luke. She knew he wouldn't.

"So, what do they serve here for dinner?" Logan asked curiously, looking at the special board.

"Burgers," Lorelai answered quickly, down to her mono-word conversing that she used when she was being denied food.

"What else?"

That broke Lorelai out of her mono-word disorder. She blinked at him. "I'm sorry, could you say that again?"

"I mean . . . what else do they serve?"

"Rory," she said, staring at her daughter in disbelief. "We have been going here for twelve, thirteen years?"

"At least," Rory answered, knowing that Logan was about to get it and inwardly cringing.

"And have we _ever _needed to see a menu? Except for when I was suffering from a mental breakdown?"

And then Luke appeared, like a knight in shining armor, except he was dressed in his trademark flannel shirt and backward baseball cap. He held a notepad in his hand. "Which would just about encompass every single moment you're conscious," he said in his dreary, one-toned way. He saw Logan first, and then Rory. The twinkle in his eyes faded.

"Rory."

She looked up at him curiously, wondering if she had done something to offend him. For the life of her, she couldn't remember what. She had never done anything to offend him in her entire life.

"I . . . didn't know you were here. Don't you have school?"

She smiled nervously at him as he began to play with the pencil in his hand, a sure sign he was uncomfortable. "Um, no. It's spring break, and I thought I'd bring my boyfriend out to Stars Hollow." She instantly regretted saying that. He wasn't the type of guy to enjoy the word 'boyfriend.' Strangely, though, he didn't even seem to notice it had left her lips. "Oh, well, uh . . ."

Rory didn't prod him, but Lorelai, being Lorelai, became impatient. "What's wrong, Luke? Did she get excommunicated from Diner-Land or something?" Rory didn't try to save him by calling her mom off, because she really wanted to know.

"Oh, no, it's not that. Nope. She's still got a valid citizenship in Diner-Land. It's just . . . well . . . you see . . . I didn't know . . ."

Lorelai sighed. "What, Luke?"

Her question was answered for her two seconds later, in the form of a person ripping through the curtain from the back and striding into the diner. Rory didn't feel anything at first. She was too shocked, almost like she was suffering from so much mass trauma that she didn't have room for any emotion. Then it slammed into her all at once with the force of a three-hundred-mile-per-hour steel train.

He was here. He was _here_. _Oh my God._

She recognized him instantly, even with such a long time in between them now. It was almost like he had a nametag on, or some huge neon arrow pointing at him. How could everyone else eat so calmly? Didn't they have _eyes_? He was so . . . so _himself_, still walking in that customary slouch he never really got out of, and – this is where her heart stopped – he had a book in his back jean pocket. She couldn't see the title, and she didn't even try. But . . . what was he _doing_ here?

She tried to breathe but couldn't. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She wasn't supposed to ever have to see him again. And then all of the sudden she was furious. Hadn't he run out on her? Why had he vanished just to come back? All of his other stopovers in Stars Hollow since then had been brief, but here he was _working_. Anger bubbled in her throat. What in the hell was he doing back _again, _standing in Luke's diner, taking the order of two old ladies like he had never left?

"Young man, if I asked for an omelet, do you think you could make it with an egg substitute?"

"Nope."

"My system doesn't take eggs too well."

"Maybe it's time for a system upgrade."

Yes, it was definitely, most definitely him. There was no question about it. The scene froze in front of her eyes and, horrified, she looked up into the equally sickened face of Luke. There were a million things she wanted to say, but none of them would make it to the tip of her tongue.

"He . . . I'm . . . short staffed, and he came to help. I thought . . . you'd be . . . at Yale . . ." he trailed off weakly, withering under Lorelai's furious gaze. Rory jerked her eyes away back to _him_, watching the subtly sexy way he moved as he walked back behind the counter, hating him passionately as he rapped the wall to the kitchen and called in an order. Unbelievable. She felt her soul twisting, something it had never done before.

_Oh my God._

He grabbed a coffeepot and she knew he was going to turn her way. It was inevitable. She lifted up her arms like she was trying to shield herself from his gaze, but it was no use. A clang told her he had seen her and set the coffeepot back onto the counter. She raised her eyes and saw him start, almost jump in midair, and then stare at her with such a disbelieving face that she knew he had had no ulterior motive to coming to Stars Hollow, and that made her hate him even more. Those liquid pools of brown that she was so susceptible to drank her in hurriedly, like she was going to vanish all of the sudden. His face was vulnerable, so surprised that he had to lean against the counter for support. Then the mask was back on. Glaring at him in disgusted amazement, she watched his expression collect itself and become entirely cool again before he easily straightened and walked back behind the curtain.

She stood up, not knowing if she was crying or not, and grabbed her purse that she had put under her seat. Everyone else faded into the background. Were they doomed to meet like this forever, from now through eternity? Could she not escape him no matter how hard she tried?

Her mother did not try to stop her, Luke didn't say a thing, and Logan didn't understand. Furious and broken, she stormed out of the diner and into the gathering night.

_What do you mean you can't escape him no matter how hard you try? You haven't tried hard at all._

She closed her eyes and remembered all the pain he had put her through, all the times he had yelled at her and she hadn't understood why, all the tears she had shed on her pillow because of him. More tears began to slide down her cheeks, and she realized that she now had another incident of him causing her hurt to put on her list.

_Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,_

_You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me as of a dream),_

_I have surely somewhere lived a life with you,_

_. . . I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,_

_I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,_

_I am to see to it that I do not lose you._

_- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -_

His calm broke the minute he was out of sight. He needed to get out. Yes, that was it. Out. Anywhere. Blindly, he stumbled to the door, throwing himself out into the back alley. He was in his car with his keys before he changed his mind. No, that wouldn't do any good. Wouldn't help. Needed to feel the air.

Dropping his keys on his seat and slamming the car door shut behind him, he plunged through the string of alleys that linked the shops and across the high school to the bridge where he had spent so much of his time back when he lived here. He didn't let himself think the whole way there. He couldn't think. It would be far too dangerous. He stripped off his coat and let the chilly breeze cut through his shirt and to his skin. Better. Okay. As he sat on the bridge over the clear black sheet of water, he closed his eyes.

Alright. Take this apart. One piece at a time.

_Rory._

Good. He thought her name. This was good.

Suddenly, his brain was on fire. She had been just, just . . . sitting there! What was she doing home? She had left him and shipped off to goddamn Yale, for crying out loud! She couldn't just come back whatever she wanted to, not when he was around, not anymore. She'd called him just a few weeks ago and completely stripped him of the right for even caring about her now. And then she had the guts to sit and stare at him like _he_ was the villain in all this!

He had felt her looking, he remembered now, when he was talking to those two old biddies in the corner. It had unnerved him. He'd thought he was getting a little rusty, or going crazy and imagining her everywhere . . . he'd known she was up in New Haven.

_Well, at least I know I'm still as good at detecting it as always._

And then there was the matter of that guy who had been sitting next to her. Jess, even in his most worked up state, always noticed things around him. When he tried, his mind brought forth a picture of some blonde person with designer label clothing and sunglasses on top of his head. God, how stupid. Sunglasses at night.

All of the sudden his stomach dropped. That couldn't _possibly _be the guy she had told him about, could it? The new boyfriend? No way. Rory had to have more substance than that. He didn't even know the man, and had hardly seen him for more than half a second, but immediately he got the sensation that he was the kind of person Jess would want to punch if he happened to be in the company of him for any prolonged period of time. It must have been the sunglasses.

What was he going to do?

Sighing with frustration, he pushed his hair back off his forehead and lay down on the bridge. The sky was heavy with stars. Some of the constellations he recognized from books; others he had been taught two years ago . . . by Rory, actually. They were far off, distant, and twinkled at him coldly from trillions of miles away. It was strange, though, because they looked like he could touch them if he just tried hard enough. He wasn't stupid enough to attempt it. He knew he couldn't.

It was pretty much the same with Rory.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Logan opened the grease-stained pizza box on the coffee table and took out another slice. He felt awkward sitting on the sofa, even though he knew he didn't look like it, with his arms spread-eagle across the couch back, but something made him feel like he didn't belong here.

He wasn't exactly sure what had happened between Rory and the guy at the diner. She hadn't spoken a word about it since he and her mother had followed her home, and now Lorelai had just finished talking to Rory and left to go get some ice cream. Logan wasn't stupid. He knew that her impromptu exit was simply her getting out of the house so Logan and Rory could talk about whatever had gone down earlier. He replayed the moment over and over in his head, when both of them had noticed each other. He couldn't find a satisfactory reason that explained what had gone on.

Rory hadn't eaten a thing. That was extremely unlike her; as much as she tried to hide it from him, she was a glutton. He looked at her worriedly as she fiddled with the scarf she had found on her chair in her lap. She refused to meet his eyes. Patiently, he waited her out, but he was determined to hear the story. He felt like it was as much his business as it was hers.

Time stood still for a little while. He glanced over at a monkey lamp on a nearby table and a figure of a rabbi on a desk. He found a spot of nail polish on the carpet and stared at it, like it might spell out what had brought on the event that turned out to be quickly grinding their happy visit to a halt.

"He's an old friend," she said finally, quietly, as if she had been picking her words carefully for the last several minutes. "I haven't seen him in awhile."

Logan bit into the pizza, chewed, and swallowed, then looked at her with an impatient smile and "I definitely don't believe you" eyes. Friends didn't have that effect on each other. He had been around the circle quite a few times, held quite a few girls, and he knew this to be a fact.

"We . . . dated, but that was a long time ago. Before I graduated," she whispered, and then, with a laugh that was the first harsh laugh he had ever heard from her, she continued, "It was just a high school fling. You know how stupid those can be. Anyway, I just wasn't expecting him. It's fine. Do you want to watch a movie?"

That was it, case closed. He knew he could probably worm some more information out of her if he wanted to, but he needed to digest what he had been given. So that was an ex-boyfriend. Something he had kind of caught on to. He didn't believe Rory when she said it hadn't been serious, though. Everything about her screamed how serious it had been.

Grinning, he nodded. "Any one you want," he said, and he watched as she tried to put on a happy face and pick out a film. He saw her struggling with herself and wished there was something he could do, but there wasn't. Jealousy began to rear its ugly head in his chest. He suddenly couldn't wait until they left Stars Hollow.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"What were you _thinking_?" Lorelai shrieked, pacing back and forth in Luke's apartment. She pressed her hand to her forehead, trying to calm herself, but it was pointless. "How could you bring him back here? God!"

Luke stared at her in shock for a second, as if he couldn't believe that she were making this _his_ fault, and then began to yell back. "What do you mean, what was I thinking? I didn't know she was coming home this week! It's a damn weekday! She never comes home on weekdays!"

"You should have asked before you told him to come! You know how much it hurts Rory to see him!" She turned and stared at the bed that had Jess' empty duffel bag on it, and suddenly she seemed to lose her fuel. Weakly, she sank down in a kitchen chair.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry. I'll have him pack up and I'll send him off tonight." With a desperate look in his eyes that Lorelai couldn't see, Luke tried to comfort her. He hated that she was upset, and he hated himself for doing it.

"No, Luke, you can't do that. He's not seventeen anymore. He's twenty. And you . . . need his help," she finished weakly, burying her face in her arms. She felt powerless. No matter how hard she tried to protect her daughter, this kid somehow always wormed is way in.

"He didn't know she was going to be here," Luke said in as gentle a way as he knew how. "He doesn't want to hurt Rory. He's probably not feeling too good himself about now."

She looked up and sighed. "I know." As much as she was willing, as much as she _wanted_, to believe the worst of Jess, she couldn't tell herself that he had come here to sabotage Rory. She remembered the look on his face when he realized who was staring at him, and it was anything but purposeful. That was perhaps the worst part.

Luke didn't have any coffee in his apartment, but he did the next best thing he could and poured her a glass of water. He was surprised when she took it and looked up at him gratefully. It was a small gesture, almost invisible, but it seemed to say the one thing they both needed to hear: _We're on the same side. _He sat down next to her and, his rough hands suddenly as light as a feather, he gently rubbed her shoulder.

"She has another boyfriend now," he said comfortingly, watching her eyes close as she drank. "She loves someone else."

Lorelai put her glass down and smiled sadly. Covering Luke's hand with her own, she whispered, "No. No, Luke, she doesn't. She still loves Jess."


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** This chapter was kind of hard to write, but here it is. I probably won't be able to update for a few days, so . . . enjoy it. Thanks for the reviews, everyone, it really means a lot to me. And for those of you who just read it without reviewing, thanks, too. No news is better than bad news?

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Friday night came with remarkable speed. Rory didn't know how it was possible, but time seemed to have flown by regardless of her agony, or maybe because of it. She had successfully avoided Luke's Diner for three days and instead gone everywhere else. Just that afternoon she and Logan had embarked on a picnic in a park outside of Star's Hollow. She closed her eyes for a second and remembered him kissing her, lying half on top of her, and how happy she had been. So why had she stopped him?

There was no time to answer the question. The door to her grandparent's house swung open, revealing a short Hispanic woman in a starched uniform, her shiny black hair pulled back into a severe bun. "Hello. Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore will be with you in a minute." she said, her accent thick and swirling.

"Well, hey there," Lorelai answered strongly, stepping into the house and towing Rory behind her. "Are you new?" Rory removed her brown frock coat and smoothed her light blue dress as she watched the maid's eyes fill with confusion. There was a pause, and then –

"Hello. Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore will be with you in a minute."

Lorelai raised her eyebrows in a 'this is now officially a madhouse' look and got a mischevious glint in her eyes. "No English?" She asked, obviously with some ulterior motive. Uncomfortably, Rory began shifting back and forth on her feet.

"No," the maid answered, shaking her head apologetically and taking both of their coats to hang in the nearby closet.

"Oh. Repeat after me, okay? Okay. Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore run a pimp joint." There was absolutely not a trace of a smile in her face to show that she was kidding, and Rory gaped at her in horror.

"_Qué ?_"

"Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore run a – Mom!"

With a sigh of relief, Rory watched her grandmother glide into the room with the noiseless, swift steps she had always used, ever since Rory could remember. "Hi, Grandma," she said, almost shyly, as if she had been caught in some dirty act that needed to be covered up. Her grandmother didn't notice.

"Rory! It's so wonderful to see you. Your grandfather and I have been looking forward to this all week!" She exclaimed, wrapping her arm around Rory's slight shoulders and steering her into the living room. "Richard! It's Rory!"

A few minutes later, the four of them were sitting comfortably in the positions they had assigned themselves years ago: Rory and her mother on the couch, her grandparents each in opposite chairs. There were the questions that she expected – how was Yale? Where her classes going well? Was she enjoying her time home? – and then the one that she had forgotten to answer when she walked right into the door. "Where is Logan?" Her grandmother asked nosily, a plastic smile on her face and her hands twisted in her lap.

"I told you, Mom, remember?" Lorelai replied exasperatedly, pushing the olive in her martini around through the liquid in little whirlpools.

"I just wanted to make sure the plans are still the same."

_Uh huh_. "Yes, Grandma, they are. Logan had to go visit some friends of his parents for an hour or so, but he should be here after dinner for desert." She smiled the sweet smile that was expected of her, but she was annoyed that her grandmother had made her say something that was already understood perfectly. Apparently, Emily saw this as a huge breach of protocol – a boyfriend missing dinner? – and wanted to rub it in. Rory couldn't understand it. Logan had already met her whole family.

Richard looked up from his newspaper, seemingly interested in changing the subject. "Rory, my dear, I've just gotten my hands on a copy of _Socrates_. Would you like to see it?"

She sent him a silent thank you with her eyes, and then accepted his invitation. As they walked to his study, Rory let her eyes run over the paintings, the furniture, the flower vases. She hadn't been here in at least a month. It was strange how she didn't even realize how long it had been until she was standing in the house, staring at a marble bust of Julius Caesar.

She realized that she had been dazing off and looked apologetically towards her grandfather, who was opening his study door for her. He hurried her in and walked over toward the bookshelf on the left wall. Rory stood rooted in the threshold, staring at the sofa, remembering one night not too long ago and trying her best not to.

She ran her hand over his desk, inlaid with rich leather and carved out of smooth mahogany wood. It was a beautiful desk. Tilting her head, she caught a glance at his planner and saw her name printed in huge block letters over today's date, which made her smile.

"Ah, here it is!" He exclaimed, returning to her with a worn book bound in black. He placed it gently in her palms as she stared at it, with its title stamped on it in gold.

"It's beautiful," she said excitedly, flipping through its old pages with extreme gentleness.

"Yes, it is," he agreed. "And I would be very happy if you would keep it."

She shook her head. "Oh no, Grandpa, I couldn't," she insisted, knowing it was useless. He pressed it against her and nodded.

"Yes, I think you can."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Logan had charmed her grandparents. Rory thought it was impossible for anyone to do so other than her father, but no, her boyfriend had absolutely blown them away. He was very well informed on current events and politics, something which surprised her since he had absolutely no interest in discussing them regularly, so he had been capable of carrying on a lively conversation with her grandfather for over half an hour. They had stayed later than ever before, and Lorelai almost choked him once they got out for being so friendly.

It was almost midnight. A chilly breeze lifted curls of hair off of her face and ruffled the pages of the book she had received that evening as she walked across the deserted town square, reading what she could in the sparse patches of light that streetlamps afforded. For some reason, she had been wholly unwilling to sleep. She waited until her mother's light was off and Logan was snoring on the couch before creeping out of her window – knowing that going out of the front door would wake both of them up – and stealing outside.

The book was purely philosophical, and she had never read anything quite like it. As she tried to digest the last sentence, she closed it and held it to her, ambling along the sidewalk and thinking. She didn't even notice that she was heading toward the lake until she was there, staring at the deep black silhouette of trees against a slightly purple sky, watching different shades of silver and coal mix to form the complex color of the water.

Suddenly she noticed a shadow in front of her, sitting on the bridge. It was a person. Her heart began to thump against her ribs so hard that she could feel it slamming into her lungs. She was lost in a dreamlike cloud of philosophy, purple sky, and silver water, but the moment she realized who was before her, the cloud dissipated.

She was going to slip away, but he turned and saw her, too. This time he did not run. She couldn't clearly see his face, but she could feel him staring, just as surely as he was. Something heavy and sad hung between them like a blanket, and she found she couldn't breathe.

Finally, he looked away from her and back up at the sky. She knew him well enough to understand that this was his signal to her that she was allowed to sit next to him if she decided to. Normally, she would have been angry that he thought she needed permission to sit down, but right now her heart felt too peaceful with words and colors to object. Almost without any noise at all, she crossed the bridge and lowered herself so that there was still three or four feet between them. Her high-heeled shoes dangled above the quiet water. It was too early in the year for frogs or crickets, so they sat there, listening to the silence, for an uncountable number of moments.

Eventually, she was the one to break that silence. It had always been that way. He was alright with not saying anything for hours; she was the one who couldn't stand it. Hugging her coat tighter around her, she whispered, "What are you doing here?"

It was the first thing she had said to him since their night on the phone. She felt him growing accustomed to the sound of her voice, carefully accepting it, shaping his mind around it. For a second she thought he was going to ignore her. "Luke asked me to come."

He didn't look over at her, even though he wanted to. He didn't explain any further, either. It was enough to be in her presence again, even if they could only do so under the cover of night. She felt familiar to him, safe, but also dangerous and different, too, and he didn't let his guard down. Not yet.

"Oh," she answered, and for a second there was nothing else to be said.

"Who is he?" Strangely, his question seemed more unexpected to him than it was to her, like she had been waiting for it. She leaned back and lay down on the wood, her legs still bent on the edge and hanging over the water.

"His name is Logan," she answered honestly. She didn't want to keep anything from him. She couldn't, anyway. Maybe this entire encounter wasn't even real. It didn't feel real. She was slightly off center, almost floating, not really down to earth.

_Stupid name_, he thought, swallowing heavily. "How long have you been seeing him?"

"A couple of months now."

The way she said it made him give in and glance at her. He immediately wished he hadn't. Her face was full of some sort of celestial otherworldly beauty, both angelic and sad, like a mourning dove. He rubbed his hands together to keep them warm and felt around in his jacket pocket for a cigarette. It was in his hand with his lighter before he remembered how much she hated it when he smoked, and he put them back.

"Do you really like him?"

She wanted to bite back at him, to say of course she really liked him, she was dating him, why would she date someone she didn't like? But as she took a deep breath to retort just that, she realized maybe he knew her better than she knew herself. If he had just asked her if she liked him, that would have been one thing, but he had to throw in that one tiny word – _really_ – and it changed her entire perspective. She tried to imagine herself ten years from now with Logan, and she couldn't.

"I don't know," she replied quietly, looking up into the dark, naked branches of the trees. She chanced a glance at him, but his face was expressionless in the moonlight.

"Okay."

"Now can I ask you a question?" Her voice was timid, afraid. When he didn't say anything, she took that as a yes. It was harder for her to formulate her words than for him to listen. After several failed attempts, she gazed at his outline with its messy hair and chiseled cheekbones and was suddenly more at ease. "Why did you leave?"

"Luke kicked me out."

She heard how distant his tone was, and she wasn't satisfied. "No, why did you _leave_?"

He had known this question was coming. It was inevitable, and she deserved an answer to it. He had been thinking about what he would say ever since he got on that bus two years ago. Nothing seemed any good to him. It had become intangible in his mind, the reasons . . . floating around in a pattern without logic that he would never be able to explain. As he felt her presence near him, those reasons didn't make sense anymore even to him. He wanted to shrug, but he couldn't let her think that he didn't care. So he decided to make himself answer her, even though he would rather drown himself in the pond beneath them.

"It wasn't my dad. Maybe partially. But most of it was . . . I just wasn't . . ." He sighed, annoyed with himself for being unable to find the right words, and she listened to him patiently. "I wasn't good enough anymore. Well," he added, laughing bitterly, "I'd never been good enough. I just finally admitted it to myself. I felt this . . . this . . ." Another pause. "I had to go do something with my life. To make it worth something."

That was as good of an explanation as he could give her. He looked at her pleadingly, finally allowing himself to become vulnerable for a moment, and begged her to realize he couldn't do any better. She seemed to accept this. Finally, she asked quietly, "So it wasn't me?"

He snapped his head back to her from where he had turned it and his gaze burned through her skin even in the dark. "No." She could tell he wanted to add something, but in the end he just raked his hand through his black hair and was silent.

He had never been good at talking, not with anyone. It was just something he didn't really do. His words were sarcastic, biting, scathing. They were meant to drive people away, not bring them in closer. He was angry with himself for becoming so good at protecting his own wellbeing that he couldn't take a risk.

She had been silent for a long time. He could feel her meditating, thinking, twisting words around in her mind. "I waited for you," she murmured. He heard how her voice broke and thought maybe she was crying.

Those were the words he had wanted to hear for a very long time, but they didn't give him the satisfaction he once thought they would. He looked over at her, lying down on the bridge, her eyes focused on the moon that hung silently above them, and he knew she was hurt. There was nothing for him to say, nothing he could do to make anything any better, so he just stared back down into the black water.

Several minutes went by, and he didn't want to move. He was afraid to even breathe too hard, lest she should suddenly disappear like frost. For just a second, they were the same as they had been before everything went wrong, before he screwed up. They were just a boy and a girl who adored each other, nothing more and nothing less. He let himself forget about all the complications now, about her phone call, about her boyfriend. They were nothing new. They'd dealt with them before.

When she stood up, his hand involuntarily reached out to grab hers and hold her back, but she was too far away. She didn't notice, and he tried to recover by crossing his arms and looking away from her. "I have to go," she told him. He comforted himself by holding onto the tinge of regret he heard her speak with and nodding. As he watched her walk away, he swore he saw her blush in the moonlight, and he let himself think that she'd only grown more and more beautiful with each second that she had been away from him. When she was out of sight through the thick trees, he lay down and glanced over next to him where she had been.

_"The woods are lovely, dark and deep.  
__But I have promises to keep,  
__And miles to go before I sleep,  
__And miles to go before I sleep."_

_- - - - - - - - -_


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** Thank you so much for all the reviews. It's strange when you see your story through someone else's point of view, but strange in a good way. And I want to say I am so sorry for how long this chapter ended up . . . I stared at it for like fifteen minutes and couldn't find a good place to break it, so here's the product. I guess maybe you can read it in pieces? Or skim? I'm sorry! Also, Lane comes into this chapter. That was kind of difficult for me, so we'll see . . .

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_Flame. It was the only thing she was aware of for several long moments. She felt it searing her body, burning her delicate skin, wrapping her in a painful and comforting blanket that she pulled tighter and tighter around her until it pressed in on all sides. She loved it, she even loved how it hurt her; it was almost relieving to be lost in so much heat._

_She heard a chuckle, a deep laugh that came from within his chest, and suddenly the blanket became two arms that engulfed her and buried her. She didn't feel deep enough, and she pressed further against him until they were almost one body; the licking tongues of fervor still penetrated her right through her clothes. It was intoxicating._

_"Are you going to smoke me or mind meld with me?," she heard him joke huskily, and she felt his breath in her ear, which sent shivers down her spine. She couldn't see past him, didn't want to see past him. There was something safe and, at the same time, exhilarating about being so close to him. Finally, he dipped his head and she caught his lips. Their kiss was so powerful that it was almost violent, like two bodies that had been kept apart against divine law and were being reunited. She felt the rough shape of his teeth and the soft inside of his cheek as he held her. She tried to touch his stomach and his arms, but he pinned her against a wall and began to greedily probe her mouth with such desperation that all she could do was tangle her hands in his dark hair and close her eyes against the soft brush of stubble against her cheeks. She heard him murmur something over and over again, but couldn't tell what it was. Finally, she caught a few words. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry . . ."_

When Rory woke up, she was terrified. She was very, very alone in her room, with no Jess, and she was very, very cold. More than that, guilt immediately began to pull her under and drown her. She closed her burning eyes and swallowed her tears.

_It doesn't mean anything._

When she looked around her again, she let her gaze wander across her room. Her books were in the same places that they had been in since she left home. There was a glass of water on her dresser. Her teddy bear sat in the corner, and she had flung her purse by the window.

_Right. Nothing's different._

She hated this monster that roared inside of her, that could be silent for months and then suddenly jump to life in all its golden ugliness. She felt it clawing around in her stomach, scraping her ribs.

There was nothing to think about.

She had moved on. There was another man in her life, another school, another town. Her dreams were looming on her horizon, close enough to touch. She was hardly even the same person anymore.

Except . . .

That wasn't entirely true. She was the same person. She knew it because the way she felt now was exactly like she had felt back when she was seventeen. The frustration, the denial. There was no use pretending it wasn't there. Words from not too long ago echoed in her head. _Well, you like making up stories in your head, so it should be easy for you._

She remembered last night on the bridge, and for a second it was hard for her to decide which had been real: her dream or the conversation over the pond with Jess. It had felt good to talk to him again. It wasn't wonderful or happy, but just . . . good. Satisfying. Like some desire of hers that she didn't know she had was being quenched. They had the ability to sit down and suddenly act like everything was okay. They'd always had that ability. She pushed the memories of him yelling, of him returning to Stars Hollow on a whim to come get her even though she had known he didn't really mean it, of her crying, all these things, out of her head.

She still couldn't believe that he was here. That they had spoken. Just a week ago, Rory never expected to see Jess Mariano again.

"Hey, Ace."

She looked over into her doorway and was greeted by Logan leaning against the wall, showered and dressed, hands in his pockets. He looked so casual, so familiar, that inwardly she breathed a sigh of relief even as something inside of her suffered an unpleasant jolt. He, although she had never thought she would say this to herself, was safety. He represented what she knew, what was expected of her, what everyone said she belonged with. He was a new boyfriend, a student at Yale, successful, wealthy. Yes, for all of his talk of seizing the moment and living out loud, he was still safety.

"Hi," she said, almost shy at him finding her in her pajamas, and smiled at him. He grinned back.

"So what's on the agenda today?"

Brightening up at once, she looked at her clock and exclaimed, "Lane's home!" He had heard many stories about Lane. In a few seconds, it was settled. He had to meet her best friend, or else this trip really wasn't worth it. Giving him an impulsive kiss on the cheek in gratitude, Rory got up to go take a shower.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She looked so different from when they were younger that Rory still got an electric shock whenever she saw her for the first time in a little while. Her hair was long and thick and peppered with sparkles. She wore eyeshadow and contacts, band T-shirts and ripped jeans, but there was still something graceful about her that her Korean upbringing had pounded into her so hard she couldn't take it out. It was through this that Rory recognized her.

"Hey!" It was a half squeal that came from both of them as they threw their arms around each other and rocked back and forth in the doorway to Lane's apartment. They tried to speak at the same time, and then giggled in the way neither of them could giggle with anyone else. For the first time in several days, Rory's thoughts were completely innocent.

After initial introductions, Rory, Lane, and Logan all sat down in the TV room. Logan was basically an observer throughout their whole conversation. No matter how much they tried to incorporate him, they had long ago built a little world that was only big enough for two petite women. He was fascinated by the bond between them, something he had never possessed with anybody. He was actually almost a little envious.

Just when he finally managed to get a word in edgewise, his phone went off. It surprised them both, and when it happened, they glared at him like they were forbidding him to answer it. This irritated him. He excused himself to go take the call.

"He won't be long," Rory said half-apologetically, knowing that she really had no idea how long it would take him and hoping she was right. "He's got a lot of stuff going on."

Lane smiled at her, folded her legs so she was sitting cross-legged on her chair, and tucked a stray hair that had fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear. "He seems nice," she commented lightly, hating how lame it sounded. She hadn't been able to imagine her best friend with someone quite like him until they showed up at her door, and even now it still felt awkward and strange. He was . . . he was everything that Dean and Jess had not been. She knew this and Rory knew this, but neither of them mentioned it.

"He is," Rory answered, rummaging around in her purse for a stick of gum. "Very nice. I talk about you all the time. He's really excited to meet you."

_Definitely doesn't seem like it._ "And you talk about him all the time, so I'm really psyched to meet him."

There was an awkward moment of silence in which they both smiled at each other, trying to find something else to add to Logan as a conversationalist piece, but failing. Finally, Rory cleared her throat. "So, how's Zach?"

"Zach's . . . Zach. We got in an argument yesterday over The Clash, but he made up for it this morning by taking Brian out to go look at guitar amps so I could have some time to be with you. I mean, seriously, can you imagine listening to Brian wheeze the whole time we were talking? I love him to death, but sometimes –"

Logan came back into the room with a grin on his face, which he seemed to be trying to hide. Rory looked at him curiously. "Who was that?"

He sat down next to her on the sofa, stowing his phone in his pocket and stretching his arm about behind her as he did so. She smelled the strong scent of his cologne, almost too strong, and turned away. "Just a guy from school," he answered nonchalantly, and then he turned his attention to Lane.

"Did I see a couple of guitars back there?" He asked, motioning with his head to indicate the hallway he had gone down to take his call. He sounded completely sincere, but Rory noticed that half-mocking look in his blue eyes again and cringed.

"Oh, yeah. We didn't have time to pack up after we got back from our gig last night. Anyone want some Milky Ways? Zach bought a huge bag of them, but Brian wants them out of the house. His allergies, you know."

"Of course," Logan answered politely, but now the taunting light had spread from his eyes to his grin. Rory felt the beginnings of anger licking at her stomach and turned to give him a pointed glare. If he noticed, he pretended he didn't.

Lane got up to go get the candy bars. After she had dumped them in a huge bowl and put them on the coffee table, her hand involuntarily grazed a Bible that sat on the armrest near her. Even after Mrs. Kim had disowned her and her forced bonds to religion were broken, she found that she missed some of it. She missed the comfort, the reliability, the definite knowledge of what she would find on each onion-leaf page of her Bible. Sometimes she got out that Bible and looked at the passages she had memorized by heart, entirely of her own free will. This morning had been one of those times, and she hadn't put it away yet.

"You're . . . religious?" Logan inquired, and this time something in his voice was even demeaning. Not that she was Christian, but more that he thought she was a nutcase; a drummer by night and a nun by day. Lane wasn't like that and it was none of his business anyway, Rory thought heatedly.

"I was raised in a Korean household."

"And . . .?"

Lane let out a deep sigh of disbelief. "Finally! Someone who doesn't automatically associate Koreans with convents in Siberia."

He looked disdainfully at the candy bars and then squeezed his arm tighter around Rory. "Should I?"

"Yes," Lane answered seriously. A gleam of realization dawned in her face and she turned to look at her friend, who had been silently watching the whole exchange. Rory saw it with a pang, knowing Lane had just understood she was being taunted. It was the same look that was on many of the faces Logan came into contact with, but seeing it on that of her best friend, the person who was basically a sister to her, the only girl she had ever climbed a tree for to reach her room, made it infuriatingly different.

"That's enough," she said quietly, reaching out for a Milky Way and stubbornly eating it.

There was a pause. With a kindness that made Rory's heart break, Lane beamed a brilliant smile and stood up. "Well! I say we should go catch up, get coffee or lunch or something. And I need to talk to Luke about my new work hours, anyway, so let's go over there for awhile. Logan needs to eat at Luke's to get the whole Stars Hollow experience."

The mocking left Logan, to be replaced by hesitation. "Uh, well, I've already been there, actually . . ." Quickly remembering the ex-boyfriend, he racked his brain for some other solution to come up with. "There has to be somewhere else in this town to eat," he added convincingly, knowing that there was because he had passed several small cafes in the last few days.

"Luke's totally owns all the other places," Lane insisted, zipping up her coat. "He gives me my paycheck. And besides, you need to go somewhere at least three times before you can make up your mind about it. It's a rule. Isn't it Rory?"

Rory pressed her lips together, hating the uncertainty which crept up in her just like it had during her entire relationship with Jess. She didn't know if their encounter the other night had changed anything between them; his reaction was impossible to foresee. They had always been stormy with each other, hot and cold, unbearably unpredictable. She had told him to leave her alone and apparently, originally, he was only too happy to take her up on her offer. Didn't that mean something? Besides – and this was the first time she allowed herself to think it – she couldn't let him do a repeat of a Rory and Dean between Rory and Logan. Even if he wasn't interested in her, Jess, being Jess, had the potential to ruin any fragile and new relationship. She couldn't stop him when he made up his mind. It was some awful disease. She always forgave him, no matter what.

"Well, it is a rule, but maybe. . ."  
_Wait. _She remembered the book in his back pocket last night. _What's he reading?_

An indecisive moment, the weighing of the pros and cons, and finally throwing it all up in the air. _To hell with it all._ "Yes," she finally finished, decisively. "You don't want to go to Al's Pancake World on Kazakhstan afternoon."

She caught the look that Logan shot at her. "Rory . . ." His tone was warning, angry, confused. She met his gaze head on. If he didn't have to explain himself to her, she didn't have to explain herself to him.

"Come on, you can probably still get breakfast if we beg enough," she said flamboyantly, buttoning up her own coat and daring him to refuse. He knew that to back down would be showing he was intimidated of a guy she had dated two years ago. Taking a deep breath, he repeated himself. _A guy she dated two years ago._ It was over, way past over. She was with him now, and if he acted like he didn't trust her or believe her then she wouldn't stick around long. He could sense that. Strangely, Rory was the first girl he had wanted to stick around. Without saying anything, he stood up, walked out the door, and made his way towards Rory's car.

Once he was out of earshot, Rory held Lane back from following right away. "Lane –"

"He didn't try to get Luke to make grilled rack of lamb or something, did he? Or maybe it was his khakis that got him kicked out." Lane smiled as she thought of Luke throwing Logan through his window.

"No, but –"

"Maybe we should dress him down a little before we go. I could steal one of Zach's Eric Clapton shirts and we could mess up his hair a little." She grinned devilishly.

"Lane!"

Confused by the desperate look in Rory's eyes, Lane furrowed her eyebrows and pulled her back deeper into the house so Logan couldn't see them. "What's wrong?"

Rory licked her lips and fiddled with her hair for a moment, unsure of exactly how to say it. There was only so much of a word bank she could pick from, and eventually she decided to be blunt. "Jess came back." There, it was out. She slipped her hands into her coat pockets and clenched them into fists as Lane tried to overcome her shock and digest the sentence.

"Again?"

"It's different this time," Rory sighed, looking up at the ceiling. "Luke asked him to come help out while you and Caesar were gone. He's not here because of . . . me. Luke asked him." It was only when the words left her mouth that she realized how much they disappointed her. She felt her whole body shaking. It wasn't right; it wasn't fair. They had been given their chance and he hadn't wanted it. Taking a deep breath, she looked at Lane.

"Oh, Rory, I didn't know . . . we don't have to go . . ."

The horn beeped outside. She wiped at the few unforeseen tears the trembled on her eyelashes, threatening to fall, and smiled. "No, no, it's fine. I just thought you should know. Come on."

Lane tried to grab at her and hold her back, because anyone in their right mind could see that it wasn't fine, but it was too late. Rory was out the door and climbing into the back, motioning Lane to follow her. As Lane shut the door behind her, she sighed heavily and shook her head.

_Why can't you just leave her alone?_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The tiny bell over the door jingled as someone came in. Jess' first reaction was annoyance (why in the hell did stores _jingle_, anyway?), followed extremely closely by a crushing feeling when he realized that the newcomer was only Kirk. Glowering darkly, he continued to wipe down the counter.

"Jess, could you give me a hand?"

He turned and saw Luke trying to balance five plates of food without dropping any of them. He was sorely tempted to pretend he had to tie his shoe or floss his teeth, anything, but, with an irritated sigh, he threw his rag down and went over to help. "You're really not advanced enough where you can attempt to be a Martha," he noted, and got a grumble in return.

He looked out the window for a split second and noticed his mother coming toward the diner. There was a second in which he considered bolting, but changed his mind. He was a grown man; he wouldn't run from his own mother.

His relationship with Liz was strange. No matter how much she preached about how she had changed and how her life was straightening out, he didn't trust her. Couldn't trust her. She was never around when he was growing up, and now she popped into the scene and started acting like she wanted to raise him. _Too late, Mom,_ he thought resentfully. _I'm already raised._ He couldn't remember who had raised him exactly; not his mother, definitely not his father, no grandparents or aunts or uncles. It was the books. When everyone else had deserted him, left him and taken off for their own selfish reason, the books were always there. He could remember falling back into them, losing himself in them, because they were his only source of stability; they were the only things in his whole life he could count on being there.

"Hey, could you go set the pickles on the shelves?" Luke asked, completely unaware of the struggle that was going on in Jess' mind. Jess remembered how, just a few seconds ago, he decided that he wouldn't be a coward and slip away from Liz, and he wasn't really giving in. Luke asked him to do something; he was going to do it. If she needed to talk to him, he would only be a few feet away. Half-relieved, he turned to go into the storeroom.

As he unloaded jars of pickles and stocked them, he began to remember the night before his mom had shipped him off to Stars Hollow back when he was seventeen. He hadn't thought about it for awhile. It had been a night that started off just like any other. Rico and Tommy, two kids who lived in the same apartment building as Jess, picked him up to go hang out. It was a Tuesday, and, while any other mother on the planet would have forbidden their son to go out romping on a school night, Liz wasn't home. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes and left with them, climbing into an old Chevy. Usually they took the subway, so the car was a luxury. Jess didn't ask where they had gotten it – he had a pretty good idea already and it was part of the street handbook that there were no questions among friends – but he didn't get out, either. They used the car as an occasion to pick up some girls and park out near Central Park. After some fooling around, they all went to a seedy Chinese place a few blocks away that they frequented. He remembered very distinctly that Mrs. Si Lung had been just giving them a few free egg rolls (God, he loved that lady) before the police came in. Jess didn't know what exactly was happening, but several previous experiences with the navy uniform had taught him not to stick around to find out. He tried to split, and probably would have made it, too, if Tommy hadn't decided to go the same way he did. In the confusion of trying to get past Tommy to the emergency exit, Jess was grabbed by a huge officer and shackled with handcuffs. He stared at his uneaten Kung Pao Chicken, wondering if they would let him take it with him, but knowing they wouldn't because, yes, he had actually tried before. It didn't help that they found the cigarettes on him. They charged him with underage possession and aiding and abetting, because – shock! – the car had been stolen. He recalled sitting in a cold, hard cell with three or four other grown men, refusing to squeeze himself in a corner like he was afraid, but instead sitting right in the middle of his bunk with a "you come near me, and I'll kill you" glare that was his only ticket to remaining untouched the whole night. He hadn't slept at all. Liz came the next morning, having only just gotten home, and she flipped out. It was part of her charm that she could completely blow things out of proportion that she hadn't even cared about two seconds earlier. The "you come near me and I'll kill you" glare had remained on his face all that day, including when he first met Luke Danes.

But there was no use dwelling on his past. It was a hell of a mess, and most of it was his fault. What was done was done.

Shaking his head, he finished unloading the pickles and rubbed his hands together. Working in a diner meant washing your hands constantly, which dried out your skin. You had to use lotion, no matter how prissy it sounded, to keep your hands from splitting open. Either that or not care about your hands splitting open. That was just another damn piece of useless information to add to a growing list.

He hadn't told anybody that he'd worked in a publishing house in Philly. When it happened, he simply gave Luke the number to what he called his "new apartment" and avoided any conversation that dealt with why he had moved where he moved or the way he spent his time and his working habits. Since both of those topics were old wounds to the relationship between Luke and himself, Luke wasn't too eager to reopen them, and it was easy to not mention anything about where or how he got his money because he was never asked.

Then there was the whole deal with him finally having a book out in print. He remembered the first night one had been sent to him in the mail from the printers. The UPS man had the name "Earl" sewn on his uniform. Jess ripped open the box, almost hungrily, because in it was what he saw as proof that he was, at last, worth something. The emptiness deep inside of his gut hadn't went away even as he stared at the smooth cover with his name on it in the no-nonsense, in-your-face block letters he demanded. If anything, it just grew.

He shoved a few more boxes around to make more room and sat on one full of ketchup. It was strangely déjà vu to be here again like this, isolated in the storage room as he had been so many times before, almost like if he walked out through the curtain he would be eighteen again and Rory would be sitting up on a high stool, waiting for him.

Rory. Ah, yes. That was another matter entirely.

It was definitely not in the plan for him to see her here.

It's not like he hadn't tried, over the last two years, to get to her. He'd always been coming back, he realized that now, but he'd taken too long and acted too rashly, and when he could have had her one of them had resisted. Now it was what it was, and it was broken. For the first time, he'd come here without hoping to see her at all. There was no use searching for something that was broken.

But now . . .

He stood up. But now what? What did he think was going on? He was just fooling himself. It was completely them, this whole doomed-from-the-beginning thing. That's how they did it. They burned bright for a moment and then went out, not with a crash or with a burst of light, but in silent suffering because neither of them could bear to talk about it.

_"This is the way the world ends  
This is the way the world ends  
This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"So TJ and I have to head out to a fair sometime today or tomorrow," Liz said, smiling up at Luke and gripping her coffee cup tightly. "My jewelry just sells like hotcakes." Apparently, she hadn't come here to eat but to tell her brother that she was skipping town for a few days. That didn't sit well with him. Her son was the one who should know, especially since by the time she returned to Stars Hollow he'd have gone back to . . . well, wherever.

"Don't you want to tell Jess?" He asked, not looking over at her but counting up receipts.

"Ah, Jessie, my Jessie. He's a good kid, isn't he? Good kid. But I have to run. TJ's not expecting me to be gone too long. Where is he?" She stood up and wrapped herself in that ridiculous pink scarf she had made a month or so ago.

"I had him go stock something in the storeroom. He should be done by now," Luke muttered, searching for one damn receipt that he'd lost somewhere. He finally found it on the floor near the wall and picked it up. It was Taylor's. God help him if he had lost that.

"Okay, I'm gonna go back and get him."

"Uh, no, can't let you do that," Luke objected, moving to block her way into the back. "It's against regulations." Really, he was just afraid she'd break something, or put something out of order, or maybe blow something up. There were a couple of bad childhood memories contributing to his paranoia.

"Lucas, don't you worry about it," she laughed, pushing him aside and moving by him. He tried to stop her again, but then he saw Lorelai coming across the street and gave up, allowing his sister access to the storeroom.

"Just don't stay back there too long," he insisted, moving behind the counter again and watching Lorelai. He could tell how long she had to stay just by the way she walked. Right now, she was using the long steps that told him she had high heels on and was on her way somewhere. He turned around and called in an order for a cheeseburger to go with extra fries and a side of cheese.

She came through the door wearing a red and black dress and a sweater thing tied over it. He never knew any of the clothing-lingo that she used, even after all these years. He felt his hands start to sweat and busied himself making some quick calculations with a pencil on a scrap piece of paper.

When she stopped in front of him, he lifted his eyes to her maroon-painted fingernails before setting down the pencil and looking across at her. "To go?" He asked nonchalantly, as if he really didn't know. Of course he knew. It almost scared him sometimes, how much he knew.

"Uh, yeah, there's an impromptu meeting at the inn," she said, looking around in her purse for her wallet. "I don't know if you've ever spent a Saturday afternoon with Michel, but I need either a tranquilizer gun or the biggest coffee you can make and have it still be possible to carry." He watched the way she talked with her hands.

"I've got both," he answered seriously, taking the cheeseburger, fries, and cheese off of the counter and putting it in a bag. "But I think it's safer – God help me – to give you the coffee."

She smiled a huge smile and cocked her head. "That wouldn't happen to be my cheeseburger, my French fries, and my container of cheese, would it?" He hated it when she did this. It was almost like she knew how he felt about her, but then the next second she would act entirely naïve about the whole thing.

"Well, it sure as hell ain't mine," he answered roughly, rolling the top of the bag down and handing it to her over the counter.

"And he says it with such compassion," she answered sarcastically, counting out money as he poured her coffee and put it next to her back. He left the coffee off of the final price, but she didn't notice. He couldn't decide if he were happy or disappointed about that. He also noted that she hadn't mentioned Jess, and didn't know what to think about that, either.

"Do you expect me to laugh while I watch you kill yourself with calories?"

She put her purse back on her shoulder and grabbed all of her food before raising an eyebrow. "Uh, yes. You're the one who sells them to me. You might as well wrap up a coffin and leave it on my doorstep."

He felt something inside of him shift unpleasantly, something that felt almost like guilt, but she was baiting him and he knew it. "Aw, jeez, why'd you have to say that?"

"Give me a few days to decide what I want on my tombstone. Something about Jude Law, of course, and maybe _Dirty Dancing_. No, wait, _Grease._ No . . ."

Frustrated, he shook his head and waved her away. After she left, though, he found himself watching every tiny movement she made as she climbed into her car.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jess had been reading when his mom barged in, and he could feel his fingers literally itching for the book the whole time he was talking to her. Or nodding, actually. Nodding to her. He didn't say much; he never had. She was going up north for a little while and she wouldn't see him again because he'd have left by the time she got back and blah blah blah. What else was new? He didn't even really care, sadly.

"But you'll come back soon, right, Jessie?" She asked, holding his shoulders when he stood up and searching his eyes.

_If you wanted to see me so bad, you could have looked at me when I lived in the same house as you for seventeen years_, he thought, but instead he gave a sort of half-acquiescing-shrug. She seemed to take this as an enthusiastic "Yes Mom! Sure!" As she kissed him on the cheek, he pulled away. She looked slightly offended for a moment, but quickly recovered and laughed before walking out.

Okay, so that was done. Good.

He settled back in the corner and picked up his book again. He had just finished an edgy, racy book by T.L. Spinallo, the kind that left him feeling caked in cigarette smoke and in need of a shower. Now he was in the middle of something not more mellow, exactly, but more time-tested: _The Sorrows of Young Werther._ He was finding it a little too self-pitying for his taste, but was determined to finish it nonetheless.

He read a particularly striking passage and rummaged in his jacket pocket for a pencil. After making a few notes, he returned the pencil and resumed his reading.

Right in the middle of an exceptionally long sentence, he heard those irritating bells ring over the door again. He found himself listening, despite how it went against his self-respect. There wasn't any excess noise from whoever had come in, and he didn't feel like going out to check. Just as he started to sink back into the novel, though, he heard Lane's voice as she moved through the kitchen. "I know I don't start again until Monday," she was saying in her insanely fast way.

He sat for a moment, thinking, remembering what he had discovered in his earlier musings. They were tragically intertwined, it was useless. Wasn't it? Or was it possible to get to know her again, to maybe even be her friend again despite how she had pushed him away? In the end, he decided that it didn't matter. He just wanted to see her again.

When he left the storeroom, he almost ran into Lane as she hurried back to the front. There was a moment when she just stared at him, which kind of annoyed him, but as Rory's best friend he guessed she had a right to. He didn't say hello. He wasn't feeling quite that friendly. She was, though, and did. He realized that he had no valid reason to ignore her.

"Hey," he returned, scuffing the toe of his shoe into the concrete floor.

"I . . . uhh . . . Rory told me you were here," she said, sliding over so there was more room in between them, as if she thought he was going to try to seduce her or something. That would have made him laugh, but he was distracted.

"Did she?" He asked coolly. He had gotten lots of practice in maintaining an indifferent tone, but he knew the look in his eyes would give him away. "Umm . . . it's been nice to have this intimate get together in the darkness of the back hallway, but I need to get back," he said, watching her being robbed of speech and blushing furiously, as if she thought that he thought she was hitting on him. He couldn't help himself. He would have felt guilty if it wasn't so funny.

"Oh, yeah, of course. Me too." She was gone in a few seconds, running out into the diner so fast that it had to look like she had been spit through the curtain. He waited a little longer, but soon he followed, albeit at a much slower and more controlled pace.

His eyes immediately sought her out and found her, in a corner table this time. Her hair was straight today and it framed her face in that way that had always made her look even more innocent and chaste. He remembered how she kissed, though, and knew she wasn't all she seemed. She was shredding a napkin with her fingers, a sign of how nervous she was.

For the first time in a long time, he had the opportunity to watch her both unseen and undistracted. He stood back, apart from everyone, leaning against the ice cream machine and looking at the rose-color of her cheeks and the way her fingers curled around the spoon she was holding. He was suddenly thirsty for these little details that he had known so well once and somehow forgotten; he drank them in like he was dying. She stirred her soda with the spoon and then bit her lip, so preoccupied that she didn't notice when Lane sat down across from her, obviously rattled. He stared for several more seconds, thinking that she wasn't really that different after all, wishing he could just go and sit with her but knowing that things weren't like that between them anymore, and it was all his damn fault. There was a physical pain in him when he remembered that last day on the bus. He had told her about the prom . . . that had been so important, for her to hear that from his lips. He couldn't bear the thought of anyone else telling her that, of her thinking he'd forgotten.

He did his best to ignore the man sitting on the other side of Rory, against the window. Just when he was finally ready to look at him, Rory glanced up and caught him.

He suddenly felt bold again, just like he had before. He didn't look away. For awhile, neither did she. Eventually, though, she dropped her gaze to the tabletop.

Luke didn't know anything about their random meeting the other night, so he thought they still hadn't spoken to each other. Jess noticed how flustered his uncle appeared, saw him in his peripheral vision, but he didn't say anything.

"Uh, Jess, you can go back to the storeroom. I'm fine here." Luke picked up a coffeepot and began to make his way over to the corner, an apology written all over his face. Jess shook his head.

"It's fine, Luke. I've got it."

Taking the pot from him, he started to walk toward her. He didn't know what he was going to say. He didn't know how much her boyfriend knew about her past, or if he was allowed to refer to how they had talked on the bridge. He was going to have to wing it. Winging it wasn't the problem; the problem was how he had a hard time talking to anyone in the first place. Light conversation wasn't his forte.

It felt like their first time speaking to each other all over again, even though they had officially broken the silence the other night. That had seemed unreal almost, and now was the true test. Had its impact stuck? He was getting closer. Ten feet. Eight. Four. Three and a half. He wasn't the kind of man to act nervous, so he didn't amble over, but instead strode.

It was impossible to know what he was thinking. Absolutely impossible. She wished that, just once, she could see what he was feeling through those intense brown eyes of his that were absolutely searing into hers. It was like they were trying to find their rhythm again, like maybe he was asking her if she had forgiven him, but she couldn't know for sure because he wouldn't tell her. Her mouth became dry. Logan took her hand, but she didn't notice.

He stopped in front of their table, took out a pen and a notebook, and set the coffee down near the coffee cups that they already had. He pressed his lips together and looked down at her. She was so close to him that he was almost brushing against her. He saw the hurt he had caused her again, the hurt he had to live with every day, the hurt that was magnified a thousand times in his own soul and that no one knew about. He couldn't ignore her. He just couldn't do it. It was too wrong. "Hey," he said, making his eyes stay on her face, asking her a question without really asking it.

"Hey," she answered quietly, and he knew it was okay to talk to her. It was a balm to him, like water, to finally be able to talk to her. He couldn't count the number of times that something had happened to him and he had wanted to call her, just to tell her about it, and then realized he couldn't. It was a privilege restored to him. He couldn't stop the genuine grin that tugged at his mouth.

And then, Rory realized, it was like her wish was granted. She saw his relief. It wasn't much and he only let her see it for a second, but it was enough. There was relief. Maybe even gladness? She wasn't willing to go that far, but she definitely recognized his smile. It taunted her, teased her, but in a way different than Logan . . . in a way that still respected her. She felt her breathing quicken and clenched her fists, finding Logan's hand in hers when she did so. There were so many things she wanted to tell Jess, so many things she wanted to say, so many things they still had to talk out, but she couldn't right now. She tried to communicate it with her gaze, and although he gave no outward sign, she knew he had gotten it.

It was at times like this when she felt so vulnerable to him that she forgot everything. He had gotten angry at her over stupid things, said some things that should have never left his mouth, been jealous and short-sighted, even blind. But he was still Jess. He was still Jess and she was still Rory, and no matter what happened between them, there was something that refused to die. She felt it, he felt it, and apparently Logan felt it.

"Pancakes," he said gruffly, checking his watch and finding it was before noon. He had never felt so threatened, and it scared him that this threat came from a person he didn't even know. He sat there watching them, upset by how he couldn't see anything from this guy's expression that gave him away, but he could feel something nonetheless. "I'll take pancakes."

Jess' stare snapped away from Rory and over to the man next to her. He was wearing a button up collared polo shirt. Jess smirked at him, looking him over in the disdainful and slow way he had before simply saying, "If they'll take you, then sure." There were a million other things he could have said that would have satisfied him more, but he didn't want to risk making Rory upset. Not now.

Although he was pretty sure he knew what Rory was going to order, he didn't say anything. Just waited. "I'll have blueberry pancakes." And he was right. He scribbled it down even though he didn't have to and took Lane's next, eggs and toast. He had never liked eggs.

He knew he should walk away, that whoever this kid was, he was getting pretty annoyed, but he _really_ didn't want to. A long time ago, he would have just left the pot of coffee with Rory, but today he decided to take it with him so he'd have an excuse to come over more often. With this in mind, he started to turn around and make his way back to the kitchen.

"Jess," he heard behind him, softly. She hadn't said his name in . . . God, he didn't even remember when. He stood stock still for a moment before turning around and observing her composedly, even though he was _anything_ but freaking composed.

"What are you reading?"

He smiled a lopsided smile at her and took the book out from his back pocket with one hand before setting it gently on the table in between her elbows. Then he was gone, back to the kitchen.

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Logan was angry. Rory could feel it radiating from his body and burying itself in her skin. He had been annoyed earlier; now he was angry. She didn't know what to do or say to make him feel better.

She glanced down at the book in front of her and smiled at its title. _The Sorrows of Young Werther._ She hadn't read it yet, but it was on the list she kept in her notebook back at Yale. Opening it just a little, she found Jess had been making margin notes. The need to read them was suddenly stifling, but she wasn't that stupid. Logan would freak. Her fingernails tapped nervously on the countertop as she tried not to give in.

"So . . . when do you have to get back to class?" Lane asked, and Rory became acutely aware of how uncomfortable this whole situation was for her, too. She lifted her eyes from the book.

"Not for another two weeks, but all this paper stuff starts up immediately when break ends. It's going to be . . . insane." She sipped at her coffee and looked over at Logan, obviously waiting for him to add something.

"The whole newspaper is insane," he grumbled, trying to get his mind off of the situation now that they were alone with Lane again. Lane wasn't exactly his idea of the most stimulating company, but she was better than Mr. James Dean over there.

He didn't have a right to be jealous, really. He knew that. He had several, and he did mean several, ex-girlfriends. If Rory had gotten worked up every time he saw one . . . they wouldn't have made it to the first date.

But this was different. As much as he tried to shake the feeling that this was a normal relationship of ex-lovers being civil, he just couldn't do it. There was something there . . . something that he didn't even know if Rory could see, but he certainly could. He remembered what Rory had called him. "Jess." A street-slicker, leather-jacket name. Either that or a pansy name.

There was a tap on the window next to them, and Rory looked to find Zach with his face almost smashed into the glass. She let out a jump, and then waved a small, delicate wave. He waved back, but then motioned to Lane. "You're supposed to be with Brian!" She yelled. He mouthed something and then shook his head. She rolled her eyes at him. "I'll be right back," she said apologetically, and dashed from the diner.

Once she was gone, Rory knew nothing could stop Logan from asking. She was right. He leaned back in his chair and stared at his own coffee. "Is it over, Ace?"

She rested her forehead on her hands. She wouldn't have minded a question, but _that_? "Of course it's over. I told you it's over. It's been over for years."

He looked pointedly down at the book.

"We both like to read. Is that a crime? He likes to read!" She turned her head and caught a glance of Jess walking through the diner, that walk only he had, that "I-don't-give-a-damn-what-you-think" look on his face. She saw him pouring someone else coffee, saw the easy, tempting way he moved, and turned away. Rory was nothing if not faithful for as long as she could possibly be. To be completely honest, she didn't even give her brain the time to _really _watch him. She was denying that she even wanted to.

Logan, however, saw that she did want to.

"I don't want you around him," he said evenly, quietly.

She shook her head. "I don't want you around any female, but you still do it," she said, trying to keep a lightness in her voice but unable to keep the seriousness out of her eyes.

He didn't want to admit to her that he felt the attraction between her and Jess, and that's why he was afraid, not just because she was his ex-girlfriend. His gaze held hers and he put his hand possessively around her elbow. "I really, _really_ don't want you around him."

"Stars Hollow is a small town," she said in a non-committal way, even though she didn't realize she was being so evasive.

"Rory! Dammit! Why won't you just say you won't be around him?!"

All at once Jess appeared with three plates of food, setting them carefully on thetable. "Here," he muttered, and Rory's eyes widened in half-amusement, half-disapproval when she saw Logan's pancakes had a purple leaf of lettuce as a garnish on them. "I tried to find some escargot or something, but that was all we had." She didn't trust herself to look at him, because it actually was kind of funny. Yes, Logan must have stuck out.

There was something huge and unspoken between them, something that was suffocating her, and she had to glance at the tabletop to stay quiet.

"Thank you. Now do you have a chart that I could check for health code violations with?" Logan retorted, that cocky grin finding its way back into his face.

But Jess was undaunted. "Well," he answered, "if you die, there was probably some sort of violation." He nodded to Rory as he slid food in front of her, put Lane's plate down at her empty seat, and before anything else could be said, he walked away. Rory looked after him in disbelief, with maybe a little, a very miniscule amount, of admiration.

What had given Jess this sudden inspiration to allow himself the freedom of bothering Rory's boyfriend? He had been watching them from various points around the room as he doled out food for the masses and poured so much coffee that he forgot his form and his wrist started to hurt. By the way, that was yet another piece of useless information. Pouring coffee required a form if you didn't want your hand to go numb. It was all in the wrist.

That was beside the point. He had been watching them, and he was getting a better taste for Logan every second. He watched how he refused to speak to Rory while Lane was at the table, and how he jumped down her throat the second Lane got up. What was more, he acted like Rory had done something wrong. Like _Rory _had done something wrong. And to be quite perfectly honest, it annoyed him. It annoyed him immensely. What annoyed him even more was he knew Rory wouldn't do anything about it, because Rory was Rory.

He tipped his head up as he rang the price for another customer just enough to watch Logan eating angrily with Rory making faces through the window at Lane, and he felt a little bit better about the situation. Not much better, but a little.

When they left, she met his eyes before taking his book with her out the door.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** So this chapter is a little shorter, especially compared to the mammoth last one (thanks for all the reviews, it means a whole lot to an author to get feedback, as I'm sure you all know), and it might seem kind of drabbling and pointless, but I think it's kind of important.

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It was time, Lorelai had announced, to get out _Casablanca._ _Casablanca_ was their "ice-breaking" movie, a movie anyone could relate to and everyone should have heard of. When she noticed the tenseness that seemed to have sprung up between her daughter and her boyfriend, she took it upon herself to come up with a remedy.

Rory was scooping ice cream into dishes next to her as she set out whipped cream, chocolate syrup, caramel sauce, Twizzlers, Hohos, and Oreos on the counter for their classic sundae buffet. There was leftover Chinese in the fridge from yesterday, so she warmed it up in the microwave.

"Damn, I forgot the Bugles," Lorelai muttered, searching through the cupboards pointlessly. They never kept food in the cupboards. She found a pair of shoes she had been looking for up above the sink and made a mental note to retrieve them later, although she knew she'd probably forget.

Rory looked up from the ice cream. "The what?"

"The Bugles! The little chips shaped like . . . a horn or something . . ."

"We've never had Bugles."

"Uh, yes, we have."

"You're delusional."

Logan came into the kitchen just then and, not knowing what to do, he sat at the table, drumming his fingers idly on his leg, watching mother and daughter bicker between themselves. Eventually, Rory noticed him.

"Can you mix the gummy worms with the candy corn and put it in that bowl?" She asked wickedly, knowing what his response would be.

"Come again?"

"C'mon, Logan, live a little. You're supposed to be the Thelma to my Louise, the Bonnie to my Clyde. You have to have the gummy-worm-candy-corn mix," she begged. She forgot the rift that was between them at the moment. When she was in her house, next to her mom, it was almost like her modern day problems couldn't touch her. Like they didn't even exist.

He laughed and stood up to do as she asked, relieved that things were starting to seem somewhat normal again. "I don't think Thelma or Louise ever ate candy corn."

"Well," Rory went on, almost giddy with delight as she put the ice cream back in the freezer, "if you can pass the candy corn test we might just find a Brad Pitt to knock off tomorrow." As she passed him, she put her hand on his shoulder. It wasn't a big deal, but it was very intimate after the estrangement that had plagued their trip here. He was suddenly very happy.

"I've never seen _Casablanca_," he remarked slowly, watching the gelled worms fall into the bowl and thinking that the idea of eating those with candy corn was so disgusting they must have had to think really hard to come up with it.

Lorelai turned to him in shock, gripping the counter behind her. "_What?_ What?!" He opened his mouth to say something, but it was too late. She was shoving him into the living room. "You can't go on for another _second_ being so deprived! At least not in this house you can't," she added pointedly, steering him to the couch and shoving in the DVD before turning on the television.

He watched as both of them made several trips to carry in all the food, and then the beginning credits stopped rolling and the story line began. He wanted to pay attention, but try as he might, he couldn't. His eyes kept drifting to the way Rory's sweater had slid partially off her shoulder, and how he could see sparse golden freckles on her skin. She clumsily stuffed the gummy-worm-candy-corn mixture into his mouth, making him chew it and giggling when he tried to spit it out. An hour later, Lorelai had fallen asleep on the couch, so Logan moved in to kiss her. She let him.

Almost like he was trying to claim her, he pushed her back against the coffee table and began to probe her mouth with a deeper motion. That was when she suddenly tensed and shoved him off. He looked at her questioningly, confused. "Not with my mother here," she rebuked gently, and turned back to the TV screen. He watched her face flicker with shadows from the light, how there was something mysterious and foggy hidden behind her swirling blue eyes, how there was a whole part of her that he didn't know at all.

He looked at the book that lay next to her on the corner of the coffee table. And in that second, he thought it was the bigger part of her.

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Sitting in the darkness on the bridge, Jess took a cigarette out of his pocket and stared at it. There was a lot that you could read into a cigarette if you truly wanted to. He'd never really looked at one before. He turned it over and over in his hands, feeling its smoothness, its fragility. He tapped it twice on the wooden planks beneath him and watched excess tobacco drift down to land in the silent water. Flaring up his lighter, he put the delicate tip of the cigarette into the flame and watched it curl and singe, first yellow, then orange, then red, then black. That made him think of relationships. They started out white and unmarked, and then someone would light them with a just mere spark. At once they burned away, so incredibly quickly that they would have gone through the violent stages of hot color and crumbled into blackness before you even realized you had anything in the first place. What was worse was that this blackness lingered under the white the whole time; it was just unnoticeable at first until a flame was put on it.

He shook his head with an ironic smirk. _What made you so philosophical, Mariano? Sick, twisted idiot. A cigarette is just a cigarette. _He stuck it between his lips and inhaled, feeling that familiar tightness in his lungs, before breathing out a cloud of dense smoke. His hands started to twitch like they always did when he was nervous, and he sighed to try to calm himself. As of late, his mind had been working overtime, creating little scenarios and then destroying them because he was too jaded and cynical to enjoy them. Instead, he read anything, everything, it didn't really matter, as long as it took up time that he would have otherwise spent postulating and guessing and regretting.

He wasn't the kind of man to apologize and try to do things over, better. That would require an emission that he had been wrong and needed to fix things in the first place, which stabbed a knife directly into his pride. For people who had grown up like Jess did, it wasn't too difficult to figure out why his pride mattered so much to him. It was all he had, the one thing that couldn't be taken away from him, his only defense against the world which he was brought up in. He had been taught that he could trust no one except himself, so that was pretty much how he'd lived his life.

Lately, though, he started thinking maybe he wasn't so trustworthy.

It had been stupid to just run off to California, but now, when he was alone again, he still felt like his reasons had been valid. God, he couldn't imagine having stayed in Stars Hollow High for one more year. The principal there had a vocabulary that Jess had mastered by age eleven. All of the novels on the class reading list were one step up from a Dick and Dottie book, and a very small step, at that. And the _people_. They were so _close-minded._ They didn't accept him, and he hadn't exactly rolled out the welcome wagon for them, either.

But at the same time, he was mentally kicking his eighteen-year-old ass for not seeing that, however valid his reasons might have been, a few more months of hell would have been preferable to what he had gone through. There was no other way to put it, regardless of how cheesy and poetic it sounded – he had lost himself. There was nothing for him on the West Coast. Even the depths of the ocean weren't as deep as Rory –

And there it was _again_. Stop thinking about her. _And if you have to think about her, don't sound like freaking Nicholas Sparks, okay?_

Anyway, California had been empty. Pointless. There had been a reason his dad hadn't searched for him until seventeen years after he was born: he was just curious. He didn't want a commitment, and it didn't take Jess too long to find out he didn't want one, either, but it did take him long enough that by the time he realized it he had already lost everything he had. Stupid pride had driven him out of Stars Hollow, and it kept him away for a while. He ended up feeling just as lonely and restless in Santa Monica as he had in Connecticut, even more so – go figure – despite its life and color. It wasn't _his_ life or _his_ color. His blood had thumped in his veins and empowered him with a burning desire he had thought he knew already but he really hadn't, not until he experienced it full on.

But, as he had already pointed out to himself, by then everything was lost. It was too late.

He took another drag on the cigarette. It really did help calm his nerves. Too bad. If it didn't, he would have pitched it.

Ha. Yeah right.

He hated how familiar it was here. It made him angry that nothing had changed. Everything had to have changed. His whole world had been shaken, and here Taylor was in front of Doose's, just like he had been every day since probably the Jurassic period, lining up peaches and pears to tempt helpless little old ladies into buying fruit that they couldn't even eat with their bad teeth. It was an outrage to him that everything could be so . . . _normal_. Or at least what passed for normal in Stars Hollow.

He wondered what she thought whenever she saw him. Actually, he knew. He saw it in her eyes, heavy and hooded, all the pain he had caused her. That, too, crawled underneath his skin and burned through the layers of tissue right to his heart. Didn't she know that her hurt, no matter how awful, was magnified a hundred times in him? He had been forced to live every damn day for the past two years knowing what he had done to her, not even caring what it meant for him because he was so slashed by the guilt of making her innocent blue eyes turn dark with confusion and pain. He couldn't apologize; it wouldn't be good enough.

He hadn't wanted to hurt her. Oh God, he really hadn't. For the first time in his life, he had thought about someone else more than himself. But he didn't have much practice. Old habits cropped up, he couldn't talk, he couldn't tell her what was on his mind, even though his goal was always to make her happy. Had he believed he would stay in Stars Hollow forever? No. Not for one second. That was one of the first things he'd told Rory when he met her. So what had he been thinking? Stars Hollow forever, maybe not, but Rory forever, yes.

Yes. Rory forever.

When had he let himself lose sight of it?

The cigarette finished, he snubbed it out and tossed it in the water. A brief memory of him showing up at Yale, desperate, pleading, without a plan, glimmered across his mind like moonlight. He abandoned it and stood up to walk back to the diner.

"_O plunge your hands in water  
__Plunge them in up to the wrist;  
Stare, stare in the basin,  
__And wonder what you've missed."_

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"Jeez!" Luke gasped, turning around from the kitchen table with surprising haste and almost knocking the chair over. He grabbed the bottle of beer he had been drinking and took another swig.

"You're intimidated. Admit it," Jess taunted, his mouth in a straight line. He took off his jacket and hung it by the door, and it seemed like he had never been gone.

"Where have you been? You know what, never mind. We're gonna have to strap cymbals on your feet or . . . or somethin', because you walk like a girl," Luke grumbled, wondering how on earth Jess had learned to be so quiet. The beer seemed to suddenly taste bad and he made his way to the kitchen sink and poured it down the drain.

"I walk like a girl? This coming from the man with a bell over his door?" Jess shot back, striding over to his unmade bed and ransacking through the sheets in search of a book. Or at least Luke guessed it was a book, and he was right. His nephew straightened up with a slim volume that looked extremely well worn in his callused hands.

"So . . ." There was the long pause that Jess had gotten extremely used to. It was the surefire sign that Luke wanted to bring up an awkward subject but couldn't, and was hoping for a little help. _Well, you ain't gettin' none._ "Umm . . . is everything okay?"

"Downright chipper."

"Did you . . . talk to anyone?"

Jess sighed irritably. "Would it be easier if I strapped a video camera to my forehead or just carried a tape recorder?" There was that teenager poking his head through again. He could only imagine the serious déjà vu that Luke had to be going through right now. Just for kicks, he might grab his coat, march out, and go crash his car.

"Nah, it's not that. Never mind." He turned back around to look at some papers on the table.

However, the current Jess was just a tad bit different than the old Jess. It was the current Jess that dropped the façade and said bluntly, "I haven't been bothering her, Luke."

His uncle looked over his shoulder and nodded. "Okay."

"Okay," Jess replied. Luke turned back around to go read, but Jess' curiosity was suddenly piqued. "What are those?" He asked, indicating the papers spread across the tabletop.

Without warning, Luke became very flustered. "Uh, nothing . . ." He muttered, trying to gather all the loose sheets together and stuff them in a folder as quickly as he could. Jess leaned forward and blinked once or twice.

"Divorce papers?" He asked quietly, wondering if he was going to suddenly fall into cardiac arrest at the tender age of twenty. Maybe even pop a blood vessel or something. An image of Lorelai flitted through his brain. No way. There was no way that _divorce papers_ could be on Luke's desk. That would indicate his uncle had been married . . . and, well, that was the day hell froze over.

"Um, yeah. Long story. Well, not really. It should be a long story, when you get married, but mine isn't. I went on a cruise with Nicole, got drunk, got married."

Jess tried to imagine what color parka Satan was wearing.

"_What?_" He almost forgot who Nicole was, and then remembered. "The _lawyer_?" That was so . . . so . . . wrong.

"When we got back on land, though, it all seemed really stupid. So I'm trying to fix it." Luke cleared his throat with extreme discomfort, looking like he wanted to jump out the window before admitting all this.

"You . . . married . . . a lawyer . . . on a cruise ship." A pause as it soaked in. "Does MTV know about you?"

Luke suddenly became so embarrassed that he refused to talk about it anymore. "Shut up and go read."

"Did you get hit in the head by a whale? Threatened into submission by a terrorist group? Maybe your brain couldn't handle the sea air after all the years of burger fumes and you just . . . lost it."

"Go read!"

"Did you get married in flannel?"

"Jess."

"And did she have a matching baseball cap?"

"_Jess._"

Stunned, Jess stopped his wicked tirade and sank back onto his bed, staring at the book and not reading the words. Okay, so maybe things had changed around here a little. He suddenly started laughing when he thought of Luke standing in a lawyer's office with flowers and a horse drawn carriage parked outside, and he couldn't stop.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** Since I'm going to be insanely-out-of-my-mind-crazy busy for the next few days, I decided to post another update tonight. It's yet another long chapter . . . and I haven't really reread it since I wrote it, so tell me what you think.

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The Dragonfly was a beautiful inn. Her mother had done a great job with it, and in all its sparkling newness Rory could see Lorelai's tastes everywhere: in the delicate fleur-de-lis pattern that was etched near the ceiling, in the warm hues of the hardwood, in the curving staircases and intricately carved furniture. Although she knew the other side of her mother best – with its crazy neon colors, fuzzy tie-dyed fabrics, and raunchy t-shirts – the more refined Lorelai had absolutely broken loose in the Dragonfly.

She waited as Logan removed his knee-length suede coat and hung it up. His navy sweater was embroidered with the Ralph Lauren logo and she watched as it crinkled and stretched with the movements of his chest.

He caught her staring and grinned. "Like what you see, Ace?" He teased, his frustration from yesterday almost completely forgotten. Sunlight played on his face and caused his dusty shadow to hit the ground.

She smiled without saying anything, her mind on something completely different than he believed it to be. Her hair was styled in gentle deep brown waves that cascaded down her back, and he smashed them under his arm as he pulled her close and began to walk with her toward the lobby. She let him do it, leaning into the contours of his body, again overpowered by the smell of his cologne. It was almost as if she were testing herself, or maybe testing him, when she linked her hand to the belt loop of his khakis. A casual observer would have thought her happy, but someone who knew her well could've recognized the confusion in her eyes, the uncertainty.

A cry went up and there was a clatter in the direction of the kitchen. Before either had much time to react, Rory had been torn from Logan and crushed in the arms of Sookie like she hadn't seen here in years, rather than just a few weeks. "You've been in town for almost a week!" Sookie scolded, breaking away from Rory and waving an egg beater at her. "Where have you been?"

"I . . . I was showing Logan around. It's great to see you," Rory smiled, half unsure of what to do with an instrument used to pummel eggs just a few inches from her face. She saw Sookie look over at Logan and then remembered. "Oh. Sookie, this is my boyfriend, Logan. Logan, this is Sookie. She's the best chef you'll ever meet," she added sweetly, with such sincerity that no one would have doubted her. There was a hurried shaking of hands that came to an abrupt end as Sookie realized she had left meringue only half-made and shot back to the kitchen.

"So . . . that was a Sookie," Logan murmured, raising a blonde eyebrow.

"Yes, that was a Sookie." She looked away from him to the counter, where her mother stood grinning, holding up a finger as she haphazardly tried to wrap up a phone conversation. There was a frustrated look on her face, a few cajoling words, and then with a bang she slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

"God, those French," she complained with a wicked glance in the direction of Michel Gerard, who was filing something a few feet away.

"Yes," he answered without looking up, knowing her comment was directed specifically to him, "We eat our meals with utensils and actually wash our laundry. We are horrible." Lorelai stuck her tongue out at him and he started. "Do not make faces at me!"

"How's it going?" Rory asked, walking over to her mother and leaning against the front of the counter. She liked the simple chandelier that gleamed over her head, elegant but understated. She liked how nothing felt too stuffy.

"Well," Lorelai said, smiling and half-closing her eyes like she always did when she had a particularly good story, "Michel walked in on an old naked lady this morning."

"Really?"

Michel glared at her from over the pile of papers. There was an offended look in his eyes and his voice became dragged out and whining, like Rory remembered. "Oh Lorelai, for once, shut up!"

"She asked him to bring up some towels," her mother went on, waggling her eyebrows. Michel yelled something in French and then was gone, leaving Logan standing a few feet away from Rory with a supremely disgusted look on his face. Neither woman explained anything to him.

"So, are you two here for lunch?" Lorelai asked, making a quick note with a pen on the calendar in front of her. Her face kept morphing between its serious business look and the more whimsical expression she usually wore.

"Yeah," Rory said, playing with a strand of her hair. "We didn't have any food at home and I thought maybe I could bring Logan somewhere other than Luke's." There was something that passed through her mind at that moment, visible only by the distraction present in her eyes, and then it was gone.

"This is the _only_ place other than Luke's. Listen, I have to go meet with Jake – "

"Who?"

"Jake. The plumber." 

"Oh! Butt crack guy!"

"Yes. So I'm going to go meet with butt crack guy and I'll find you after you eat, okay?" Lorelai asked, thumbing through a filing cabinet for a folder.

"Sure."

"Okay. Logan, take care of her, will you?"

Logan looked up with a half-forced smile on his face, as if he were contemplating something quite gross. Then he nodded. "My pleasure." He didn't notice the look that Lorelai gave him as she left, one that was dissecting his insides and reading into his very bone marrow. No one noticed, in part because no one could imagine her capable of fear, but when she turned the corner to go down the hallway the expression on her face read the opposite quite clearly.

Once he was alone with Rory, he turned to her and continued, "Butt crack guy?" He watched as Rory giggled, shrugged, and grabbed a chocolate mint from a bowl on the counter. He shook his head, realizing more and more that Rory was in her own magical world whenever she came back to Stars Hollow, one that he was going to have to work hard in order to find a place in.

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The cool, hard cut air of late afternoon burned in Jess' lungs as he sat on a bench in the town square. He'd never been one to hang out in town squares, but he decided to give it a try and people watch. Everyone knew he was back, and everyone was rabidly curious as to why, but when he tried he seemed to melt into the background. He was invisible. None of the town gossips even saw him, although he was sitting in clear sight right by the gazebo. He hardly even moved when he breathed. A book sat in his lap and his thumb was holding his page in it as he raked his eyes across the people who were walking by, some in a hurry, and some almost going backwards because their pace was so slow. That seemed to be the majority of people.

Glancing casually down the street, he suddenly saw the unmistakable mop haircut on top of a freakishly tall head. The muscles in his fingers tensed and his mouth became a hard, thin line. Immediately, he knew he was acting stupid. Whatever dispute there had been years ago was completely irrelevant now. He wanted to look away, but Jess wasn't wired like that. It was as if he had pinned his one true enemy in a crowd of dozens and had him on a firing range.

_Look, Bagboy, neither of us won,_ he thought to himself, remembering that sultry spring night and the flashing of blue and red lights. He suddenly felt very tired and very empty. _Neither of us won._

Then Dean was gone, turning down a side street.

He opened his book and stared back down at it, trying not to think about how stupid he had been, but it was no use. Memories clawed at him, working their way into his brain so surely that there was no way he could force them out. Eventually, he gave in, resting his elbows on his thighs and staring distantly ahead.

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_He's so furious that he finds the strength to yell. Most of the time his anger is silent, simmering, waiting, buried deep in some dark part of him, but tonight it boils up into his throat and he can't hold onto it anymore. The snow on the ground sparkles and, even at nine at night, he has a shadow from the brilliance of the moon._

_"Do you know what that feels like?!" He shouts, glaring at her with such distasteful rage that her bottom lip begins to immediately tremble and she drops her gaze to the ground beneath her. Her hands are balled into fists in her pockets, and the four feet between them are impossible to cross, almost like there's a force field that separates them and, if either of them were to step into it, they'd be killed._

_"I have to hear from Miss Patty that you're goin' around, hugging _him_? Eating lunch with him?" He goes on, and all of the sudden he steps away and rakes his hand through his hair. He wouldn't be so angry if this were a first time thing, or if she'd been upfront with him about it, but it seems like she's always hiding her new friendship with her ex-boyfriend from him and he always hears about it from other people. This is just the last straw._

_She says nothing, like she can sense that saying anything would be useless. He knows he's heard her defense a million times, but he wants to be reassured again. "What the hell's going on, Rory?" He asks, his voice lowering and his eyes boring into hers. _

_When she looks up this time, he sees a little stone of anger in her expression for the first time in relation to this very tired subject. It takes him aback. "What do you mean, what's going on?" She whispers quietly, her words hard and biting, colder than the snow is. "You know what's going on. We're friends. You know that."_

_He takes a deep breath and wonders what's making him so mad. He knows she'd never do anything to hurt him intentionally. He knows that she would never cheat on him. He looks over at the dark line of trees near them, silent again now that his initial fury has subsided. One word flits through his mind – jealousy. That's impossible._

_"I don't get why you're so jealous of Dean. You don't have to be," she says, more gently now, and he looks at her in shock, wondering how she was able to read his mind. He fights for composure and refuses to admit what apparently is painfully obvious._

_"I'm not jealous of Dean." He can tell she doesn't believe him by the way she nods and looks at her feet. He wishes she would finish her thought of why he shouldn't be jealous, but she doesn't, and he refuses to pursue it because that would be almost like giving in. There are a few more moments of quietness. Snowflakes fall and bury themselves in her soft hair. _

_"I just . . . I wish . . . I still wish you'd tell me," he says, and that's the deepest confession he's willing to make. By the look on her face, he realizes it's enough, and for once he's said everything by saying almost nothing. _Don't pick him over me_ was what he meant, even if he didn't want to admit it to himself. She's caught onto this._

_"I'll tell you. I just didn't realize it was such a big deal. But I know now, and I will," she answers, and just like that, just as quickly as it started, their fight is gone, melting away in its turn with the snow that falls on his neck and face. He looks at the old knitted scarf wrapped around her neck and the thick, bulky sweatshirt she's put on. Her eyes are wide and huge like a little girl's. Her boots are tiny and clumsy. He thinks of the word beautiful._

_She timidly steps into the space that separates them, wincing involuntarily as if she believes in his force field theory. She doesn't catch on fire and burn up or suddenly disappear. In fact, nothing happens, so she slowly continues across the frozen ground until she's only a few inches away from him. For a couple of seconds, they silently contemplate each other. His eyes find the few freckles on her face that winter has not faded away, and he has the desire to kiss them, but he doesn't move. _

_She slips her hands into his jacket pockets where his own hands are stuffed, and he feels her fingertips on the bones in his wrists and then on his palms. He continues to observe her with solemn eyes that don't blink and are absolutely unreadable, even when she smiles up at him. His heart jumps in his chest, and she's so close to him that he thinks maybe she feels it. He can feel hers beating through both of their clothes, and soon his matches her rhythm so that they beat in unison._

_When she stands on her tiptoes and kisses him, he doesn't respond for a moment. There's something about this that makes him feel more like an onlooker than a participant, like he's watching them from the treetops. Undaunted, she pulls him even closer to her and continues to softly probe his lips with hers. _

_It's as if a sudden instinct kicks in, like he was finally giving in to a temptation impossible to resist. His head tilts and the kiss becomes something that started off gentle but quickly morphs into desperation. He doesn't touch her, but keeps his hands in his pockets. This, too, only lasts for so long, and unable to bear it any longer he cradles her carefully, so different from the way he is unashamedly controlling her mouth. She matches him movement for movement, not the naïve little girl she appears to be, and they're both left breathless._

_Their relationship is deadly; he knows that. It's like a suicidal Kamikaze air mission. She's everything he'll never be able to reach. He can't stop himself from trying; he's become dependent on it. As much as he wants and needs it to go on forever he knows there's no way it can, not with the endless circle they're stuck on, this confusion of whether they are mortal enemies or lovers. He doesn't think about that now. Things have been good lately. Maybe they'll stay good for a long time . . . Yes, they will. They have to._

_"I have to get back," she whispers in his ear. He looks at her, all of his stoniness gone, replaced by something almost tender, and nods. "I don't want to," she states._

_"I don't want you to."_

_There's a moment of indecision, and he holds his breath. Then, "Okay."_

_"Okay."_

_They sit down in the snow on the banks of the pond, neither wanting to actually go out on the bridge. He doesn't push her. He just holds her, thinking, wondering. Denial is futile. He's lost in her. She owns him now. It's something he never wanted for himself, something he never even thought possible, but in her innocence she's caught him. He doesn't mind that much, but he wishes he could make himself stop struggling._

_Why is he fighting something he wants so badly?_

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Pressing his lips together, Jess turned the page and then realized he couldn't remember the last few paragraphs of what he'd read. His mind hadn't been on the book.

He suddenly felt very aggravated. For the last few days, he hadn't been able to control his train of thought at all. It was like a civil war were going on inside him between his mind and his body, like his brain was leading an insurrection and refusing to allow him to do what he wanted. Shakespeare had written about that once. Jess sympathized.

Stretching his legs, he took one last look at the solid blue sky and decided to go inside, since people watching wasn't really working for him. He was just about to get up when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a person stop in midstep on the sidewalk and stare at him. He felt the familiar tingling and knew immediately who it was.

He wanted to look at her, but didn't. Maybe that would scare her away. Instead, he slouched back further on the bench and opened his book again, the entire time trying to seem completely unperturbed. It probably worked; he was good at keeping up a face . . . but then again, this was her. She usually saw through him.

There were a few moments of agonized waiting, a couple of "what ifs" running through his head, and then he heard the soft padding of delicate footsteps and, his breath catching in his throat, he felt her sit down next to him. There was silence. He looked up from his book straight across the street, to where the bookstore's door was shutting behind a small blonde woman and a little girl was playing jump rope in the grass. Then, slowly, he turned and looked at Rory Gilmore.

_It's over. You're over. Get over it._

For a second, he just stared at her. He searched her face for all the characteristics he remembered, although he had painfully tried to forget: the small indent in her chin, the shape of her mouth, the curve of her nose, the graceful design of her eyes, a freckle right below her eyebrow. There was an awkwardness between them that he thought might never go away. Vaguely, he noted that she was wearing mascara. He had the sudden desire to touch the ends of her chocolate brown hair. The whole time he unashamedly studied her, she was sitting two feet away from him and returning his curiosity. He felt the way her eyes lingered on his cheekbone, his neck, his shoulders, like she were trying to memorize him.

"This is a little weird," he whispered, trying to remember the last time he had been so close to her. He could smell her, and when he tried hard enough, he could almost taste her. It caused him a kind of pain he had never experienced before.

She nodded and didn't say anything. Then, finally, she cleared her throat and sat up straight. "You looked lonely," she stated, trying to lighten the mood, but it was accurate.

"Huh." He smirked at her as she squirmed in discomfort, not knowing what to say. For his part, he didn't worry about it too much.

"And you know me, I'm the lonely police. I can't let anyone look lonely. It's a violation of the small-town friendliness rule." She leaned back against the cold metal of the bench and crossed her legs. He wondered what she was thinking about now. The last time he had seen her, before Stars Hollow, was that fateful night at Yale . . . how could things ever be normal again after that? And what was normal, anyway?

Across the street, as if right on cue, Taylor came stumbling down the steps of Luke's Diner with a livid Luke appearing to have physically pushed him out. Jess looked pointedly at his uncle, who was turning red in the face from fury. "Ah, yes. Small town friendliness. Service with a smile," he commented sarcastically, tapping his feet on the concrete beneath the bench.

"Luke can be our poster boy," she added, and he nodded his head before watching a red SUV pass by in front of them. It was her turn to make him impatient, to make him suffer, and he couldn't do a thing about it.

The initial ice was broken, so neither minded the next few moments that were spent in silence. He pretending to contemplate the storefronts across the street, but they both knew he wasn't thinking about a cat shop or a cake bakery.

He didn't want any more small town talk, but they weren't ready to hit the hard stuff yet. He felt it. He was perfectly content sitting next to her without saying a word, but he knew that she would leave if some conversation didn't come up. Rory had never possessed a high tolerance for awkward situations. He bowed his head and leaned forward, rubbing his hands together to stay warm. "You look good." With just the smallest movement, his gaze flitted to her and took in the light purple sweater she was wearing with a grey skirt and a matching coat. It made her seem very sophisticated. To him, everything about her screamed Ivy League.

He looked away with a private smirk when he saw how she blushed at his compliment. So at least that was still the same. He was still turned to the grass when she finally answered, "So do you." He raised his eyebrows with a bit of an innuendo, but then let it go and chuckled, glancing down at his wrinkled tan shirt with the word "ARMY" stamped on it and the coarse navy jacket he had pulled on.

"I was thinking of modeling for Vogue."

She giggled for a moment, that adorable laugh that Jess could hear sometimes when everything was really quiet, and then shook her head. "No, Jess, seriously. You look good . . ." Her smile suddenly began to fade and her eyes turned serious. "What have you been up to lately?" She didn't need to tell him for him to catch the unspoken add on: _Besides leaving, that is._

"Living life wherever the wind takes me. Being free and blown along with the breeze. Heading out for that big old horizon," he answered, his voice dripping with cynicism. He was trying to decide if he should tell her or not, but then he realized that if he couldn't tell Rory, he couldn't tell anyone. He looked up at her with intense eyes, dark and mysterious. "Do you really want to know?"

She seemed taken aback. She hadn't expected a real answer. Since when had he ever given her those? But soon her eyes matched his and she involuntarily leaned closer to him, drawn by the hesitation and secrecy in his gaze. "Yes," she answered shortly, and he couldn't help but admire her. For all she knew about him, he could say he was on the run from a murder in Las Vegas.

"Okay." He stood up and stretched, breaking the spell that had momentarily lay suspended between them. She watched him zip up his coat and run a hand through his hair, a movement that was completely instinctive for him. "Let's go somewhere." _Anywhere._

"Luke's?" She asked, playing innocent. He rolled his eyes.

"No."

They walked in the cool afternoon air for a little while, meandering to the other side of the town square. After strolling down a few streets, they found themselves in front of The Hungry Diner. Rory grinned. "This is where my mom eats whenever she's avoiding Luke," she confided as he opened the door for her. She was momentarily surprised by this, but didn't show it.

"Your mother has good taste," he said a little sarcastically as he took in the flowery décor of the main dining room, accented with every shade of pink imaginable. He suddenly felt very out of place in his old faded sneakers and ripped jeans.

The restaurant was basically empty, which would make conversation easier. He started to walk to a table and felt her hands grab at his sleeve. The gesture, so natural between them once, made him freeze.

She looked pointedly at a sign that read "Please wait to be seated." He sighed and glared darkly at a woman with huge hair piled up on her head, who was ignoring them.

"Hey," he said, impatience lacing his voice. He had waited so long to tell someone that he didn't think he could wait much longer, but this was definitely a sitting down kind of conversation. "Do you mind?" Rory tried to hide a smile.

The woman looked up slowly, her apron stretched tight across her ample stomach. She was checking her lipstick in a mirror. "Let me find a table for you two."

Jess stared at the rows of empty chairs. In fact, the only occupied one was in the corner, holding an old man. "You want me to draw you a map?" he muttered furiously, knowing she heard him when her head snapped up and she closed her powder compact.

Rory elbowed him in the side. He paid her no attention.

The woman went into the kitchen, leaving Jess and Rory looking after her in disbelief. Jess leaned down to her ear and whispered, "Do you want to go somewhere else? Maybe to the coffee shop for pie?"

She shivered at the feeling of his warm, damp breath on her skin, and all she could do was nod dumbly.

Soon the door into the kitchen swung open and the lady came back. They turned around to leave when she suddenly called after them, "I found an open table for you two!"

Jess opened the door and waited until Rory had walked about before yelling back, "Good, now go sit at it!"

Once they were safely outside, she looked at him with that curious expression somewhere between disdain and complete amusement, watching how the light breeze ruffled his unruly hair. "That was a Hemingway line."

"Yep." He was silent for a moment, and then a crooked smirk tugged at his mouth. "You took my advice."

"What?"

"You read Ernest."

She tried not to think about Ernest Hemingway or that night she had weakened and called Jess after going out with Logan. She had to quicken her pace to keep up with him, and her heels clicked on the sidewalk. "You might not have to see her again, but I come here all the time!"

He looked unapologetic. "You have to admit," he grinned wryly, "she was stupider than Ozzie, after Ozziefest. Maybe she could give Kirk a run for his money . . ."

Finally, Rory caved in and laughed. "Alright. So she was a little slow." There was a pause. "But don't insult Kirk!"

Shaking his head and smirking, he muttered, "I'm sorry."

All of the sudden she turned and looked him. He realized the gravity of the situation immediately and wished he could switch the subject, but he couldn't. He had never apologized during their relationship, not once, even when things got out of control and when everything could have been fixed if he had just learned how to get past his pride. She'd been waiting for those words since . . . well, maybe since they'd met. But he'd never said them. He never apologized and never really told her how he felt. He'd always hidden everything, always been dark and mysterious, because that's the kind of guy he was. Otherwise, he wouldn't be Jess Mariano.

Briefly, he remembered that one night in the winter, how desperation had seized him and how he'd said it even though he was terrified. _I love you . . ._ But then, just like before when things started to get too close for comfort, he'd left. Just . . . disappeared.

"Okay," was all she said. The look in her eyes spoke volumes. He wanted to correct her, wanted to say that's not what he had meant, but he was silent, because after a second he realized it was _exactly_ what he meant.

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He watched her eat her coconut cream pie, watched how she licked each bite off her fork. He shoveled a portion of his own piece into his mouth and swallowed without tasting it. Too bad. The pie was supposed to be really good here.

"Are you going to tell me?" Rory was a patient woman, but Jess didn't get excited over nothing and she couldn't wait anymore. Her coffee between them was hot, and curls of steam half hid him from her. He was silent for a second.

"I moved to Philadelphia."

Quite starkly, she realized she had never wondered where he lived now. She never even thought of him as having a home. That was stupid; she'd called his number, but to her he would always be some kind of wanton, bohemian wanderer without anything to tie him down. A rebel.

"Philadelphia? Why not New York?" She asked curiously, putting down her fork for the first time since the pie had been set in front of her. He took a sip of the glass of Coke the waiter had brought him, not minding earlier when she had remarked on the grossness of Coke and s'more pie mixed together.

"That's just where I ended up," he said simply. "And there's nothing for me in New York." He didn't elaborate on the statement, just hoped she'd understand what he meant. Apparently she did, or else she accepted his lack of explanation, because she didn't ask anything for a second.

"California?" It was a one-worded question loaded with meaning. _Was what you left me for worth it?_ He had no response except to shake his head. There was a moment of solemnity, and then it was gone almost violently, like it always was with them. She smiled.

"Okay, so, Philly. Then what?" She definitely expected more to the story. She observed him as he sat across from her, slouching, his fingers resting on the book he had with him, his jacket worn and faded on the edges, his face relaxing from its customary scowl and guarded look to something that appeared almost like anticipation. She felt a tug in her chest and watched as his eyebrow went up and he took a deep breath.

Finally, his eyes penetrating hers, he replied, "I work in an up and coming publishing house."

For a second, she thought she'd misheard him, but then the pieces fell together and they _fit_. It was what she had always seen him doing, somewhere in the back of her mind. She could envision it now: there he was, up at two in the morning, pouring over some obscure manuscript in the dim light of a naked bulb. And suddenly, the pride that welled in her throat made it impossible to breathe. The boy that everyone told her would amount to nothing, the kid everyone had lectured her was wasting his life and would ruin her, too, the one who was supposed to be a waste of space, had _done_ something with himself!

For a second she couldn't speak. Then, with her eyes not on him but on the floor, she asked quietly, "Do you like it?"

She knew that he wouldn't want to admit it, but eventually she heard his begrudging voice mutter, "Yeah."

Without warning, she threw herself across the table at him, flinging her arms around his neck. He was so surprised that he didn't respond, but just sat there with her squeezing him harder than he ever imagined a little petite thing like she was could do. His senses were numbed by the sudden assault, and he caught her scent again for the first time in what seemed like a very long time. It was still so soft, so delicate. They were trapped in time for a moment like that, with Rory on her knees on the chair just so she could reach him. He would never tell her how his heart stopped then. When she fell back to her side of the table, she began to laugh through the lining of tears on her eyelashes as she realized the front of her sweater was now smeared with coconut and s'more pie.

"Well," Jess said, partially dumbfounded, leaning back into his chair like he had just survived a hurricane. "Obviously chicks dig publishers." The light in his eyes was teasing, and he couldn't hide the pride that worked its way into his expression. The sharp angles of his face softened like they always did when he was happy. She watched him, transfixed, and she realized she had known all along that he was going to shock her like this someday with how wonderful he'd become. Or maybe he'd always been this wonderful and she just hadn't looked hard enough.

"I'm just so . . . God, Jess . . . I can't . . ." She rested her chin on her fists as he looked at her, pleased with her speechlessness. He thought of telling her about the book, but decided it could wait. Her eyes glittered like they had whenever she told him he could be more, do more. "That's wonderful." She smiled into her hands. "That's really, really wonderful."

To him, she looked so much like an innocent little child that he had a very hard time believing she was the same girl who had left him awake in the middle of night with a bottle of beer and a typewriter, trying to do something to ease the pain. Eventually, he'd just ignored it, but he was realizing that ignoring it hadn't made it go away. His grin faded a little and he took another drink of Coke. "Yeah, well . . ."

"What's it called? What do you do? Have you published any books? Who works with you? Where is it, exactly? What kind of authors do you like the most?" The pie was completely forgotten, a first for Rory Gilmore. He stared at her, stunned from the sudden air strike of questions.

"Jeez, I didn't know I was standing in front of a firing squad."

Instead of getting offended, she laughed. He liked that about her. "Jess, tell me about it!"

He'd never been able to tell her no and stick with it for very long. Although he'd many years ago decided to talk as little as possible, she was the one person on the planet with whom he sought conversation. He couldn't deny her. Staying in his relaxed position on the chair, he tried to satisfy her curiosity.

"I wake up, I read, I go to bed. Sometimes I even eat in the middle if the economy's good . . ."

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The sun had set by the time they left the coffee shop. They wandered through the silent, residential part of Stars Hollow, walking on roads that were almost never used, talking about things that were almost never talked about. Rory's mother should be home from work by now, and Logan was probably getting ready to leave the function that his father had demanded he attend while he was in Hartford. Everyone was going to wonder where she was . . . but that thought flitted from her mind almost the moment it entered.

"I'm so proud of you," she finally said after they had discussed every aspect of his publishing house, from the color carpet to the names of the guys who worked with him to what coffeemaker he had in the office. She was almost shy after she said it, her cheeks pinkening in that distinctly Rory way which made her so unadulterated and pure. He looked up at the indigo sky, where the first stars were appearing, and tried to remember when someone had last told him that they were proud of him. His brain came up blank. He glanced back down at his feet for a second before gazing at her.

"And you were holding out on me. One of the head writers for the Yale paper? That's big. Lots of people got their big breaks in school newspapers. Poe started out like that, and Golgol, Chekov . . . great journalists, too, like Abercrombie." Now there was no mistake about it. She was definitely blushing. He crammed his hands in his pockets and wished that this five foot wall that separated them from each other was gone. The bittersweet conversation was just a foretaste of how it used to be, before . . . before everything. Back when they could say the first thought that came to their heads, back when he didn't have to be so careful. He really missed that.

"It's great, and even Paris can't ruin how great it is," she admitted, spinning in a little circle of happiness. He'd never seen her do that before.

"Don't go Julie Andrews on me," he warned, smirking. _She's not really that different,_ he thought to himself again. _Not really at all._

"I'm sorry," she said half seriously, walking in a straight line again. "I pull lots of all-nighters, and sometimes when I do sleep I even dream about the paper." Her voice was quiet, like she was ashamed. He checked her face to make sure she wasn't joking, and when he saw she wasn't, he burst out laughing anyway.

"Yeah, that's you, Rory Gilmore." Something she said earlier tugged at the corner of his mind, and his expression quieted. "What do you dream about the rest of the time?"

She immediately caught the catch in his voice and looked away. _About you_, she considered saying. _About you kissing me, about us. Sometimes about the bad parts, but mostly about the good parts. The important parts._ Of course, she couldn't say that. She didn't even _want_ to say that. Her heart skipped when she felt his jacket sleeve brush against hers. Some things never change.

"World domination, mass empires, all that Pinky and the Brain stuff, you know."

His face hardened. If she didn't want to be honest with him, fine. It wasn't like he couldn't tell that there was still something sizzling between them, the last stubborn coal that refused to go out. It wasn't like he was so stupid he thought she didn't notice it, too. It was exactly what had happened years ago. He _knew_ she wanted him. She might not want him for long, but right now she did definitely want him. It was written all over her face. Her face always had betrayed her.

He caught himself. There he was, thinking like a jackass again. That didn't take too long. It was just the last remnants of an old flame. _She has a new one, remember?_

"I'm more of a Tom & Jerry guy myself."

"What part do you like, the mouse always running for his life or the cat constantly being clobbered?"

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to paint me as sadistic."

She eyed him warily. "For those of us who know you, there's no trying involved."

They both instantly felt the repercussions of her statement. She didn't know him anymore, not really. Neither of them said it.

Since they were already in uncomfortable territory, she made up her mind to ask the question that she had been dying to ask him since the day he left. It stuck heavy in the roof of her mouth for a moment, but finally she pushed it out without thinking too much, because thinking would have meant backing down.

"Jess?"

"Hmm?"

She bit her lip. _Don't think_. "Why didn't we work?"

His expression was unreadable again. She hated that. She hated how he could take the time to dissect the inquiry so coolly, without batting an eyelash. She hated how he didn't even look at her after she asked. She hated how he just bowed his head to stare at the pavement and took a moment.

Finally, just when she thought her hate was going to boil out of her in the form of some kind of physical abuse, he slowly said, "Shit happened."

She was dumbfounded into silence for a moment, and then looked at him incredulously. "Pardon me?" When he didn't say anything, she let out something between a gasp and a laugh. "If that's the best you can do with words, you aren't in the right business."

He stopped walking and, for the first time since he had come here, he looked shaken. Not falling apart, but definitely off his orbit. He raked his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. She knew he was thinking about having a cigarette without even asking him.

"Dammit, Rory. Shit happened. I was trying to make everything turned out right and . . . it all just crumbled. It fell apart. And I couldn't bear that . . . that look you gave me . . ."

"What look?"

"_That_ one!" He said, almost savagely, and she didn't know what to do. "The one that says how sorry you are for me. I don't friggin need anyone else to feel sorry for me!"

Now she was angry. "I wanted to help you! It wasn't like I didn't think you _could_ do it on your own! I just didn't think you _would_!" Her eyes flashed. He watched the pale blue began to turn darker and was half-relieved she was mad instead of crying. His chest felt like it was on fire, like acid was being rubbed into his skin.

"I wasn't gonna go back to repeat my last year." He put his hands back in his pockets, almost vulnerable but not quite, and she realized she was seeing that part of him he'd always tried to hide from her before. "You go to Yale. God, Rory, Yale." He seemed to think that these two statements – him being a dropout and her attending an Ivy League school – completely explained the whole matter. She waited for more of an explanation, but obviously that was the Jess Mariano emotional outpour for today.

"That wouldn't have mattered to me," she said quietly, looking at the crisscrossing branches above them now that they had started walking again, this time on a path that swerved along the outskirts of the woods. He grunted something that she took to meant he had heard her, but she also knew he didn't believe her.

"Jess?"  
He looked over at her.

"That wouldn't have mattered to me."

This time he nodded, and she had to fight the urge not to take his hand as they made their way, almost involuntarily, toward Lorelai's house.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The lights were still off. No one had come home yet. Rory held her coat around her, unconsciously covering the pie stains on her shirt. She checked her wrist for her watch, but somehow she had left it off today. It was a somewhat freeing feeling, not having a watch. She made a mental note to forget her watch more often.

"It's so . . . quiet."

"Yes," Jess agreed, "An innocent passerby might be tempted into thinking that normal people lived inside of it." He fished around in his jacket pocket for a cigarette, still annoyed with her for blowing up at him earlier. Well, that was a lie. He was only half annoyed. The other part of him was greatly disturbed, more than a little unsettled, and grasping desperately for some sense of normality. He hadn't thought they'd get into serious subjects so quickly. But then again, that had always been them, hadn't it? Consequences be damned.

He lit it discreetly, and she didn't notice he had it until the somewhat pungent odor of cigarette smoke tickled her nostrils and she turned to see him smoking. "I wish you'd stop that." She knew he wouldn't.

"You know what they say about black lungs."

Looking at him distastefully, she crossed her arms. "What?"

"They sure can dance better than white ones."

She shook her head at his corny comment, but she couldn't hide the tiny smile that played on her mouth. He saw it and had to smile, too. It was a disease they had; their grins were interlinked. _Too bad our tears aren't_, Rory thought bitterly.

"When did you start smoking, anyway?" She walked over to the porch and sat down on the top step, while he leaned against the railing that ran up the stairs. He pulled his jacket tighter around him.

"Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. . ."

He was so evasive. Always had been. She couldn't figure him out; one moment he would cut her to the bone with his rough honesty, and the next he was quoting Star Wars. She wondered vaguely if he would ever publish the "How to Handle Jess Mariano" guide, but doubted it.

"So mysterious . . . still holding onto the bad boy image?" She asked, a little bit more acidly then she'd intended to.

He laughed, and that made her feel a little good and a little stupid at the same time. "Now Star Wars is part of the bad boy image? What next? Michelle Branch becomes the brand of the Playboy Corporation?" He took a long drag on his cigarette, and then added as an afterthought, "I'm not trying to hold onto an image anymore. If it's there, then it's part of the whole package."

She kind of got what he meant. After you acted a certain way for awhile, those characteristics inevitably became natural. It had happened to her, too. "You're a bad butt publisher," she remarked, coloring when she noticed what lengths she'd gone to not to swear.

He looked over at her with alarm and amusement gleaming in his eyes underneath the light of the streetlamp in the front yard. "Did I just hear you use the term 'bad butt?'"

"No," she answered quickly.

"I thought so."

She was mesmerized by the red glow on the tip of his cigarette. She watched, half entranced, as he snubbed it out and looked around for a garbage can. Finding none, he continued to hold the still-smoking end.

He knew he had to leave, even though he didn't want to. The last thing he needed was for her mother (who hated him) or her boyfriend (who was pretty well on his way to hating him) to show up and find them alone on the porch. It would stir up a lot of unnecessary lecturing on Lorelai's part. That irritated him, because he and Rory were both adults who should be well out of the danger zone of lectures from mothers, but with the Rory-Lorelai relationship being how it was, it seemed impossible that Lorelai could separate herself from her daughter's affairs. And that, he only too gratefully accepted, was none of his business.

"I should go." But he didn't move.

She looked over at him, at how he was refusing to meet her eyes. "Okay."

There was a second during which he waited, remembering again that time by the woods in the snow. _All you have to say is that you don't want me to go_, he thought, but he knew that she wasn't about to say it. He stood up from his position against the railing.

"It was nice talking to you, Rory," he said, and something about his tone reminded her of that day, so long ago, when she had sat on a bus and looked at him through a window. _'Bye, Rory_. There was something in it that warned her she had not seen the last of him, and she wasn't even entirely sure that he recognized it. Maybe it wasn't true; maybe that's just how she wanted it to be.

"You too, Jess. I think you're . . . I'm really happy for you," she finished lamely, tucking her dark hair behind her ears and trying not to concentrate on the dead serious look with which his intense eyes pierced her. What had happened before would not happen again. She would make sure of it.

He didn't say anything, and when she glanced up again he was walking away from her, just an outline turning down the road. She saw him disappear completely around the bend, and then sat there for a long time, her thoughts confused and jumbled like someone had smashed them with a hammer. She remembered the paperback book in his back pocket and wished she had asked him what it was. Then she remembered his other book, the one she had taken with her from the diner, that was on her desk in her bedroom.

Headlights washed over the driveway eventually – she didn't know how long she had been alone – and Logan climbed out of her car. He seemed to her more of a stranger than someone she actually knew.

"Hey, Ace," he said softly, sitting down next to her and wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

"Hey," she answered, and even she was surprised at how even her voice was. She got the sudden unpleasant sensation that she was an outsider watching this conversation and not even involved in it at all. "How are your parents' friends?"

"Great. Old, rich, fat. Great," he answered, leaning against her and breathing into her neck. He felt familiar, all of his angles against hers, but at the same time there was something so different about him that she felt like she were being violated. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about this as his lips traced her collar. Then he found the smears on her shirt. "What happened to you?" He asked, laughing.

She smiled back at him and shook her head. "Oh, it's nothing. Just a small snack mishap."

"Clumsy girl." His fingers began to touch her waist, stirring her skin.

"My mom isn't home yet," she said hurriedly, looking at the shadow of the mailbox and staring at it. She heard him acknowledge her somehow, and then his hands were all over her. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but the way her body jumped scared her. She felt her nerves almost crawling and pushed him away.

"What's wrong with you?" He asked, and this time his voice almost sounded harsh. She looked at him in disbelief. They'd hardly been more than a couple of months, and here he was, frustrated that she wouldn't let him feel her up when her mother could be home any minute.

"What's wrong with me? Are you crazy?"

Then there was the sound of crunching gravel and Lorelai's Jeep was being parked right behind Rory's car. She let out a sigh of relief, even as Logan dropped his arm from her and moved away like she had suddenly turned into something extremely dislikeable. She didn't really care at the moment. She was so mixed up that she couldn't handle thinking about it.

"Mom!"  
"I brought goodies," Lorelai exclaimed, jumping out of the front seat and hoisting a paper sack over her shoulder. Rory recognized the Dragonfly Inn logo on the bag and thought it was sweet of Sookie to cook things just for her mother to bring home. It always had been.

"Good, I'm starved," Rory returned, wrapping her mom in a hug and breathing in her scent, some strange mixture of coffee and laundry detergent. She buried her face in Lorelai's neck.

"Rory, what's wrong?" Lorelai whispered, so quietly that there was no way Logan could hear.

"I missed you."


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** Okay, next chapter. Thank you so much for the reviews, especially those of you who review consistently. I don't really know what to say, other than you're great.

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It was a little before eight o'clock when Jess slipped back into the diner and hung up his jacket on the coat rack. There were a few late dinner stragglers, but everything looked like it was under control. Smoothly, he made his way behind the counter and took the book out of his back pocket, _Anthem._ He was rereading it for the fiftieth time (although he still maintained that Ayn Rand was a complete wack job) when the door opened.

He didn't look up, but his ears caught no sound of Luke coming out of the kitchen to serve the new customer. Exasperated, he closed the book and searched under the counter for a notepad and a pencil before straightening up.

Dean stood staring at him like he had just sprouted five heads and maybe a detachable purple arm. He sighed. It was unavoidable; Stars Hollow had a population of maybe 20. He was just glad that he had managed to escape seeing Frankenstein for as long as he had.

"What do you want?"

Dean didn't move. Jess' frustration began to mount to growing anger. He remembered the cold grass and the whirling lights of the cop car, how desperately Rory had searched his eyes and how he had stubbornly refused to say anything. His throat constricted.

"I'd give you a menu, but we don't have pictures on it so it wouldn't help you much."

The cold tension between them almost seemed to grow and expand and undulate, like it was a visible haze. It made his muscles tense in that way they always were when he was in an extremely uncomfortable situation.

"You're back," Dean finally spat, like the words were burning through his tongue, choking him. Jess studied him serenely, his face a masterpiece in the art of emotional separation.

"And if you tell me I'm holding a pencil, I might just start calling you Sherlock," he answered carelessly, although his mind was stringing together numerous impressive curses that he wanted to use and his body was buzzing with adrenaline. Again, he reminded himself how stupid it was. Again, he told himself that they had both lost, that the entire situation was irrelevant now, and that he should let it go; Dean was married, for God's sake. And once again, he ignored his own advice.

"How long are you here for?" Dean asked.

Jess shook his head in incredulity. "I just pitched a tent out back. Are you going to order something?" Even as he said it, he saw something shift in Dean's eyes, something underhanded and ugly. Warily, he waited as Goliath seemed to be preparing himself to say something.

"Does Rory know you're here?"

He didn't like where this conversation was going. "Excuse me if I don't go get us popcorn and cocoa and discuss my personal life with you, but I'm not really into the whole _Dead Poet's Society _bonding thing." He turned around to stalk through the curtain.

"I owe you an apology," Dean called after him. His body froze. "You know that night when I punched you at the party?"

Jess refused to turn around. He stood stock still, waiting, knowing all at once, and his stomach felt like it was careening into a bottomless pit. His palms started to sweat.

"Well," Dean went on maddeningly, his smirk evident in his voice, "I'm sorry. You didn't go as far with her as I thought you had."

_Oh, God._

All of the sudden his restraint snapped. He whirled around, fire and fury in his eyes. There were no words, no need for words; it was written plainly in his enraged gaze. He couldn't even tell what he was thinking because all of his thoughts were colored red and swirling. He knocked over a chair as he strode to him. He saw Dean's face register shock and then surprise, like he hadn't expected him to react. And then . . . fear. Jess took the time to notice that one glimmer of fear before throwing a punch that Dean dodged. He kept at him until he felt the satisfying thump of skin under his knuckles, all the while skirting fists that were aiming for him.

In a sudden movement, he felt hands on the back of his shirt, dragging him back behind the counter. He recognized his uncle's voice but couldn't comprehend the words until they had been yelled several times. "Break it up, break it up!" At once, Jess grabbed a hold of himself and threw Luke's grasp off of him before walking over to a cabinet and kicking it. That was something else he learned in the city: you couldn't let yourself be out of your head for too long. He closed his eyes and saw her face running through his mind, porcelain skin and almond hair and pale blue eyes, soft lips like flower petals, and he didn't gave a damn that he sounded like Nicholas Sparks anymore.

"Get outta here!" Luke was pushing Dean toward the door angrily, roughly. "Get the hell outta here!"

Jess looked up from the counter with hard eyes and watched Dean stumble down the steps. "If you ever talk like that about her again, I'll kill you," he said clearly, coldly, calm once again. Even he was a little shaken by how it didn't appear to be a threat, but simply a statement.

Dean looked like he was going to say something back, but Luke slammed the diner door in his face. Gradually, conversation between the few customers resumed again. It was a fortunate stroke of luck that Jess didn't recognize anyone eating, and hoped none of them knew that Dean had been talking about Rory.

_Dean had been talking about Rory._ Dammit! He felt his blood run cold in his veins and his hands began to shake. _No . . . not Rory . . . Rory wouldn't . . . not with him . . ._

He stalked to the door and grabbed his jacket before turning on his heel and ripping through the curtain. "Jess!" Luke called after him, standing in confusion by the donut tray. He fumbled blindly in his jacket pocket for his cigarette pack and took two out, lighting one and sticking another behind his ear. "Jess, where are you going?"

Without saying anything, he threw open the back door into the alleyway and let himself be drowned in the blackness of night.

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Her fuzzy pink alarm clock blinked midnight as she huddled under the covers, silent, holding a small pocket flashlight and reading a book. Well, she wasn't exactly reading the book. Her eyes were fixed on the words jammed in the margins, written in neat, expressive handwriting, but also a little hurried, like their author was afraid that they would fly from him before he got them down. She processed them a little bit hurriedly, too, like she was afraid they would fly from her before she drank them in. Usually, she would turn on the lamp beside her bed, but tonight she didn't. She had turned in earlier than normal, at around ten thirty, just because her mind felt like it was on auto drive because it was so overloaded. The cold shoulder she had been receiving from Logan all night hadn't helped.

Logan. Guilt overwhelmed her every time she thought about him. She wasn't sure if it was guilt over how she wouldn't allow him to touch her or guilt over how she felt like she was ignoring him. Maybe it was even a result of something deeper than that, but she wouldn't let herself think along those lines. Rory had always been good at that. When something scares you, just don't think about it. Pretend it doesn't exist.

She kicked out of her cocoon of blankets and eased the door of her bedroom open. The house she had lived in for years was as familiar to her in the darkness as it was in the sunshine, maybe even more so, strangely. Her fingertips traced gently along the wall as she slipped down the hallway and into the den, pausing to sit on the staircase silently. For a long time she was motionless, watching Logan sleep.

She remembered holding his hand as they soared through the air, wanting to shut her eyes but not daring to do so. There was the blue sky, and then it turned into green trees, and suddenly they were back on the ground. Her heart had pounded with a mix of so many beats that she . . . she had just . . . it wasn't what she was used to.

The admiration in his eyes when they had unstrapped themselves from each other made it easy to like him. He charmed her; he sensed what she wanted in a man and he became that for her. Her last romance, with Dean, had been like walking on eggshells, fake, doomed even before it started, no matter what she'd wanted to think. They weren't right for each other anymore, and secretly, she was pretty sure she'd known that for years. No, she was definitely sure. And then before Dean had been . . . she let out a shaky exhaling breath . . . Jess. Something hard, fast, uncertain, terrifying. Something that scared her but buoyed her, brought her up, made her grasp for more even though she knew she shouldn't. He had been all angles and shadows and mysteries, enticing her with a light that seemed almost dark, pulling her onward like a moth to a flame. The moth was burned by that flame. He'd hurt her, wounded her in a place that was even deeper than her heart, an ugly place she locked inside of her and forbade anyone to see. It was easy to hide; most people didn't even know that place existed.

So what was she supposed to do? She couldn't throw away Yale . . . and the only offer he was capable of giving her had been either him or college. When Jess came back for her, she'd taken one look in his eyes and seen nothing but desperation. He didn't really mean it. It would have been beautiful at first. Maybe they would have stuffed their silverware drawer with books and read to each other in the bathtub. But then he would have gotten restless again, needing to move on, and he would be gone so fast he'd forget to take her with him. She'd recognized that look.

Logan represented everything her grandparents had ever told her was safe. Yale. Money. Friends. She had so desperately wanted something safe . . . He always knew what to say, how to say it. He was never at a loss for words or silent. She never had to guess what he was thinking. He was experienced with relationships and knew exactly how to deal with them, how to deal with her, and how to ease all the fears she had about him. He didn't give her that burning, unpredictable feeling in the pit of her stomach. He liked talking to her, being around her. He was one step short of being a god in New Haven, everyone liked him so much. He was good to her . . . wasn't he? He would never sit next to her on a bus, heading out to California, and not mention a single sentence that sounded even remotely like "I'm leaving." Logan Huntzberger would never disappear.

She watched his face in the glow of the red light on the VCR. _I chose you, _she thought numbly. _I did. But . . . did I choose you for the right reasons?_ His chest rose and fell, a soft snore issuing from his mouth, his blonde hair no more mussed in sleep than it was when he was awake. She wished she could talk to him about it, or even to her mother, but she knew she couldn't. It was a decision she had made, and one only she could justify.

Creeping back into her room and closing the door, she proceeded to flop back onto her bed and, with trembling fingers holding the tiny flashlight, open the book again. In the bottom margin of page 58, he had written something sideways in tiny letters_. Mistakes aren't reversible, just overlookable._ She closed her eyes, half in pain and half in thought, and pressed the novel against her chest as if it could ease her distress. It couldn't. She saw herself now differently than she had ever seen herself before: she was Logan's sidekick, driving him back to the campus when he was too drunk to do so, making out with him on two-thousand dollar couches in his apartment, sitting next to him in his Porsche with her hands clenched by her legs. Since when had she . . . how . . .

It was an extremely helpless feeling, to look up one day and see that you had changed, and not realize when or how.

A tapping noise on the glass panes of her window startled her. She dropped the flashlight and sat bolt upright, staring at the shadow against her curtains. Half of her was afraid, and this was Stars Hollow, for crying out loud. Then again, she knew who it was. And that just made the fear run deeper.

_It could be Kirk_, she thought as her feet padded against the floor and she walked over to the window. _He could be sleepwalking again._ Her hands groped for the edges of the curtains so she could pull them open. _Okay, so you know it's not Kirk. You don't have to really open it, you know._ She found the division and yanked them back. _Yes, I really do._

He was leaning back against the porch railing, waiting. She couldn't make out his face, only his general outline, but she recognized him immediately. For some reason, even though she hadn't expected him, she wasn't at all surprised to see him standing outside her window a little before one in the morning. It was almost normal, with a tinge of a dreamlike quality. Her fingers reached for the edge of the window after she unlocked it and then it was open. She dimly remembered the very same man asking her if her windows opened at all, several years prior.

There was a silence for a moment as he looked at her. She had the uncomfortable sensation that he could see her clearly, although to her he was all shadow. "I need to talk to you." There was something in his voice that made her shiver, something she'd never heard before in all the time she'd known him, and for a second she wondered if he was drunk. But that was only a second. He was here, solid, serious.

"Okay," she answered quietly.

"Could you . . . could you come . . . you know, out here?"

"Why?"

"_Rory_," he said, and his tone sounded almost . . . _pleading_. She felt her heart beating in her throat and began to clamber out her window. He stepped forward and kept a hand on her back, steadying her, and then waited until she led the way down the steps and by the tree line near the road.

"I didn't expect to see you again so soon," she teased. He noticed a book in her arms, which she promptly thrust at him. "Here, this is yours." Recognizing it as _The Sorrows of Young Werther_, he took it without saying anything and stowed it in his jacket. He was a nervous wreck. Hours had passed in which he'd just walked aimlessly, not even thinking about anything, feeling so empty that a bland thought had crossed his mind: _If I cut myself, I wonder if I'd bleed._ Of course, he hadn't done anything like that. He was far too collected, even at his worst, to do anything like that. Somehow he ended up here, at her window, very late at night.

He observed her in the faint light of the streetlamp. She was wearing pink pajamas etched with lavender hearts, which almost made him smile. Her innocence was going to make the conversation that much harder, but he had to know. "I saw Dean a while ago," he said, completely avoiding small talk altogether and instead getting straight to the point.

_No,_ she thought. _Please don't know._

"We had a confrontation," he went on. It always amazed her how he constantly avoiding eye contact whenever she wanted it but, during the times when she needed to hide from him, he was mercilessly staring at her. She turned his word over in her mind. _Confrontation._ That had to be the "For Rory's Ears 1.0" version. Dread began to gnaw at her ribs. "He said something that . . ."

Frustrated, Jess tried to think of a gentle way to put it, but there wasn't one. He took a deep breath and steeled himself, hating that he had to be so blunt about it. "Rory, did you sleep with Dean?" He watched her face pale in something that he at first took to be shock, but a closer look found that it wasn't shock at all. He nearly stopped breathing.

She met his gaze timidly, shyly, afraid. His heart twisted. She looked like a doe to him, or a gazelle, or a dove . . . something light and beautiful and quiet, something that could vanish before you even knew it was there. "I . . . it was a mistake . . ."

Jess stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded, turning to stare coldly at the ground. He felt like he was on fire. His mind construed images of her delicate skin, her perfect skin, and Dean's hands. He wanted to scream. Instead, he just said calmly, "Was he married?" He prayed the answer would be no.

"Yes."

This time he couldn't stop himself from looking at her in disbelief. Then an ironic, bitter smile crossed his face and he tore his eyes from her back to the ground. The desolation in her expression was too much for him to bear.

"Don't do that," she begged. "Don't close yourself off."

Her audacity stunned him. "What?" He asked icily, all of the sudden very unsympathetic. "I just found out that . . . you . . . him . . . and . . . and . . . you say I can't close myself off?" For the first time, he was truly, honestly, righteously angry with her. He could see she noticed this by how she took a step back, as if he had become dangerous.

"Why are you so mad? You left," she said quietly. He saw a tear drip from her face and splash into the dirt, and then he lost it.

"Dammit, Rory! Dammit, dammit, _dammit_!" He tore a hand through his hair and clenched his teeth. "Why am I _mad_? This isn't you! Jesus, this isn't even close to you! You had a guy cheat on his wife! You _had sex_ with someone who was already married!" The rough way he said it seemed to free her up to cry harder, and her body trembled. "What the hell were you thinking? And then –" There was a sharp inhale and his voice suddenly dropped, almost gentle. "And then he comes in and he gloats about it. To me. Right in my face. In front of everybody." His breathing became ragged, heavy. "God, Rory. He broke you. He should have taken care of you . . ." Another long pause in which she wouldn't meet his probing gaze. "You're so special . . . he should have kept the secret you gave him . . . to . . . himself . . ." He fell silent, unwilling to endanger himself more than he already had, sadness and confusion and rage mixing in his soul to form an emotion that tasted hard and sharp, like iron.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice still choked with sobs, her mind catching his words and sprinkling them over her heart like rain. _You're so special . . . you're so special . . . _

He didn't say it was okay, like she expected him to. "I'm . . . leaving tomorrow. Early." She closed her eyes for a second, opened them, and looked at him. He was leaving. Of course. He'd always been so good at leaving. _What, did you expect him to stay here forever so you could watch him pour coffee while you talk to your boyfriend?_

"Oh." She caught something in his face, something that was told her why he was leaving, but she couldn't quite decipher it. "Going back to Philadelphia?"

"Yeah," he answered, remembering all the times he had almost been her first, and how none of them had come through. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe he couldn't have taken care of her any more than Dean had. He was too afraid to touch something that was so pure so intimately.

He hated that they were like this. She would be standing here barefoot on the lawn in tears, and he'd walk away. He had to. He turned to do just that but then stopped. "Rory?"

"What?" She was so sick of staring at his back. It seemed like most of their time together, she had been staring at his retreating back.

"Do you want to come and see my publishing house sometime?" He knew he shouldn't ask, he shouldn't tangle himself with her further, he shouldn't make it any harder to let go. He shouldn't care at all; she lived a life separate from his now. In fact, she'd begged him to do just that: distance himself. But he couldn't help it. It was like he lived for the pain that was killing him.

For a second, she didn't understand what he'd asked her. And then it clicked. It was almost like his declaration, _I'm not closing myself off to you. _"Yes."

"Good."

For the second time in a twenty four hour period, she watched him leave, and then she climbed back through her own window and stared at her ceiling.

_"And are we ever as happy as when we are on the threshold of hope? Are we ever again as amazed and delighted as when we detect the possibility of a sea of change in our lives?"_


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note: **Thanks for all the great reviews.

And as you read this chapter, just remember, patience is a virtue and it will be rewarded. I promise.

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Jess grabbed a donut from under the tray on the counter and stuffed it in his mouth before hefting his duffel bag from the floor and stumbling through the curtain and out the back, to where his car was parked. It was still pitch black, save for a crinkling bluish light on the horizon that foretold of the coming dawn. Why he felt the need to get on the road at six in the morning even he couldn't say, but the fact was that he did and he had no reason not to.

Luke stood awkwardly off to the side as he tossed his bag into the back seat and slammed the door shut. Now that his hands were free, he ripped the donut from his mouth and took a bite, chewing slowly and leaning against his trunk.

"So, uh . . . thanks for doing this," Luke mumbled, drawing a box in the dirt and gravel with the toe of his boot.

"I'll be expecting my payment in harlots any day now."

Luke looked up at him with a raised eyebrow and eyes tinged with just a bit of disgust.

"And in common North America, that was what is called a joke," Jess stated absentmindedly, finishing up the last of his donut and frowning when he realized he wouldn't be able to smoke for awhile because donut/cigarette taste was a horrible thing. He was forcing his mind to stick to these little, flighty topics. It was his cover up, and it also earned him a merit or two in the Jessica Simpson department, in which he was sorely lacking.

"You need to read a Bill Cosby book or something. Learn how to tell real jokes," Luke suggested blandly, his hands in his pockets. Jess had a sudden flashback of his father being able to understand his sarcastic comments but not his yearning for stability, and he now realized Luke was kind of the opposite. He respected that. He preferred that.

"Cosby died out years ago. Now the politicians are the source for all entertainment."

Luke nodded in serious agreement.

"I didn't mean to drag this out into a tearful goodbye. I should . . . I should go now." He straightened up and took his keys out of his jacket pocket.

"Hey, Jess? Are you . . . okay?"

Jess knew without asking that Luke was referring to the Dean incident, and the hard, cold knot in his stomach that he had been pushing away all night began to grow again. He shook it off. "I'll be alright," he answered, the first non-sarcastic statement he had given his uncle in a few days. There was a moment when the sureness and arrogance faded, leaving him vulnerable, and then it was gone.

Luke nodded. "So . . . you're going back to Philly? You got a steady job there?"

"Yep," he answered carelessly.

"Doing what?" Luke asked. He was obviously feeling comfortable; he had just broken Rule Number One in the Luke and Jess relationship, 'stay the hell outta my business.' _Why did you have to give it up, Luke?_ Jess thought frivolously. _It was working like a charm._

"I work in a publishing house, and I write. Books, you know. Well, book, actually, but I hope it'll be books."

The dumbfounded look on Luke's face was just what he had been waiting for. He grinned half-heartedly and climbed into his car. As he pulled away in a cloud of dust, he checked his rearview mirror and saw his uncle standing exactly where he had left him, unable to move.

Jess hadn't slept at all last night. He looked ahead of him at the broken white line that stretched eternally onward and then blasted the radio, sincerely dreading a multiple hour ride with no one but the ghosts of his past and his tumultuous thoughts to keep him company.

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Rory was sprawled out on Lane's sofa, her leg casually thrown over her mother's, a flip flop dangling off her foot even though it was hardly fifty degrees outside. A fly was buzzing around the light on the ceiling, tapping itself mercilessly against the glass again and again. _Stupid bug_. Determinedly suicidal, the fly continued to jar its brain until one smack finally did it and it fell to the floor. Rory cringed.

The front door opened and Zach entered in disarray, his shapeless jacket hanging off of his shoulder and his hair twisting across his forehead and by his ears. "Dude, the Ramones did _not_ take part in educational discussion. I don't wanna hear about it," he groaned tiredly, kicking off his faded Converse by the door. Brian followed him.

"I think that you're being a little close-minded . . . Rory, nice seeing you."

Rory waved lazily to him, unwilling to get up, as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Hey, Brian. Zach – "

Zach held a hand in midair as if to catch the words that were tumbling out of her mouth. "Rory, if you're gonna say one thing about brains and rock bands, I don't think I can hear it right now. Seriously. It's like a desecration."

"Hello, Ms. Gilmore," Brian stuttered, embarrassed that he hadn't noticed Lorelai when he first came in. He too kicked off his shoes, peeling his jacket off of him and throwing it by his feet. They both meandered through the entryway into the kitchen, searching for some kind of food.

Rory watched them take out a box of Twinkies and wheat-based Doritos, but her mind was elsewhere. It was true. He was really gone. She had stopped by Luke's to find her mother before coming here, and . . . Jess had vanished. Something was missing now, something whose absence made the diner seem kind of empty and lonely. It was like the town didn't even realize what it didn't have until he brought it, but then he would take it away as soon as they learned to appreciate it. She stared moodily at the carpet as they waited for Lane to finish getting ready, pulling absent-mindedly on the ends of her hair.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_It's essential to her that she does this alone. Her mother, beautiful person she is, can't help her with this. It's her own hurt, her own wound, her own cut that she needs to face by herself. She can't imagine having to suffer under any other person's gaze as she finally comes to grasp what she's been avoiding for over the past week: he has disappeared. Forever._

_She has a few more finals coming up and she knows she needs to study, but she can't. Her mind, as much as she tries to block it out, is continuously replaying that last conversation, the final accidental brush of arms and legs, the closing glance. Sometimes – and this is even worse – it rewinds to the party, to the look in his eyes when he turned his back and walked away from her. That's probably the one memory that sears her: she let him leave. She remembers the beat he waited before going, the unspoken question in his intense gaze after she called his name, _Do you forgive me? _She remembers how she didn't go to him, and how betrayed he looked. That was the last time she saw him before the bus, before the end._

_And now here she is, standing on the sidewalk, staring at the door of the diner. It looks familiar but strange to her, like a distorted version of reality that one finds in a dream. Something is almost visibly different, and it makes her heart ache to the point where she thinks that maybe she was wrong, she isn't ready, and she should go home._

No. Not this time.

_She refuses to run away. That's what _he _did. That's what cowards do. She point blank rejects dealing with things like he dealt with them. She's furious with him, more angry than she's ever been before in her life, enraged with him for walking out on her and leaving without saying a word. By now she's heard the news from eavesdropping on various gossips, and she knows that he failed his senior year. So what? He couldn't deal with it, and instead of coming to her in honesty, he split? How is that justified? She could have helped him, stood through it with him. That's what girlfriends _do.

_Or maybe . . . and this hurts with a fresh sting . . . the reason he left _was_ her. Her and her inability to make up her mind. There were times when she'd send out waves that she wanted him, wanted him to make love to her, and then when he'd finally been in a position to do it, she'd pushed him away. God, that couldn't be it, could it? Had he just eventually realized that he could get a dozen girls to mess around with whenever he wanted to, and not waste time on her and her problems?_

_Alarmed by this new thought, she suddenly can't bear to be standing there turning over "whys" and "what ifs" anymore. She flings herself up the steps and into Luke's, her eyes prickling in that way that tells her she's either crying or about to cry. It makes her feel ashamed. She abhors the idea of the whole town seeing her cry over a guy who walked out on her, of everyone seeing her as some pathetic misused love toy, an object of pity. She abhors him even more for doing this to her._

_At first she thinks that it's unthinkable that no one's noticed her, but it appears no one has. Trying to collect herself, she moves to the corner table in the back and sits there, a tear finally trickling down her cheek and making no sound when it falls on the tabletop. This, she knows, is going to be the hardest part. So many memories swirl like smoke in the air that it's almost hard for her to breathe. It _is_ hard for her to breathe. It's nearly impossible. _

_She needs to scream, but she can't. Her soul, something she never really thought about before, feels like it's shattered into a million pieces. _You don't have an effect on me_, she wants to shriek at him, at his ghost. _You don't! _But she can't because it's a lie. He does._

_She's never been so broken. _I hate you for doing this to me,_ she thinks again. Her eyes involuntarily rove the counter, almost like she expects him to materialize out of thin air and suddenly be there, glowering darkly at a disturbance to his reading or making coffee, staring at her. That's what she feels, him staring at her. There was something so unashamed and daring about the way he always did it, something that made it more intimate than kissing sometimes was. She misses that. It's hard for her to bluntly admit it: she misses that, and she misses him._

_But, of course, he doesn't materialize out of thin air. There's no reminder of him around at all. He's been washed away in every form but for the phantomlike presence that seems to haunt the room._

_She hides her pain well from other people. Sometimes she feels like they think she doesn't care about his departure at all, just from the way she completely avoids the topic and immediately brings up something else whenever he happens to be mentioned. What they don't understand is that she knows only one way to deal with her turmoil: pretending. That's what she's always done, ever since she can remember. His solution to conflict is running, and hers is pretending. _

_This is the first time she's let her guard down since she heard the news, and even she is surprised at how deep she feels the pain. _

He lied to me. About school, about Luke, about . . . about a lot of things. He lied. It's good he's gone. He wanted to be gone.

_She rests her forehead on her hand and lets her hair drape around her face, hiding her expression from anyone who might finally notice her. She can't make herself think that. As bitter as she is, as scathing as she wants to be, it's too soon. This is the place that reminds her of him so sharply that she can taste him. Her mind plays foolish games with her, and brings his voice reading a passage out of _The Great Gatsby _to her ears so clearly that she has to fight with everything within her not to look up to see if he's really there. _

I'm glad you didn't smoke it.

Yeah?

Yeah.

_It will be a lot easier if she doesn't remember all the precious moments they shared, the times when his wall broke and she saw him, not the concrete slab he protected himself with or the sarcastic darts he threw, but just _him_. That is the boy she fell in love with, the one who has a gentle smile when he feels like he can be himself and the one who is almost afraid to touch her sometimes because of how beautiful he thinks she is. _

_But she can't think like this. She can't. It's inconceivable to imagine herself moving on if she remembers these qualities about him. No, she has to remember how he hurt her. How he lied. How he was jealous, how he yelled, how he made her cry . . ._

_It doesn't help like she thought it would. In fact, it only makes things worse. Maybe she has no idea how to work out this getting over him thing after all. Maybe she'll always be stuck like this, dying inside and unable to tell anybody about it. The thought scares her._

_She hears footsteps coming over and looks down to see Luke's boots near her chair. Luke has never been good with awkward situations and he's not the kind of sensitive guy to know exactly what she needs. She understands this, and she expects him to be uncomfortable. She wants to ask him a million questions, like why her boyfriend took off to California (or at least that's where she thinks she heard her mother say he's gone), or if he said anything about her before he left, or if he's contacted his uncle at all. She doesn't say any of this._

_"Can I get you somethin'? A piece of pie? It'll be on the house," he says uneasily. It's the best he knows how to do. They both skirt around the issue without mentioning it; she doesn't even look up. She just doesn't have the energy to pretend right now, and she knows he doesn't expect her to._

_"I'm not hungry," she whispers, wishing that she could stop sounding like someone's beating her, but she can't. She wishes so many, many things . . . things that are weighing down on her like iron, steel, mercury maybe, crushing her. She closes her eyes against the bittersweet recollection of him standing right where Luke now stands, bickering with her over music or books or movies, continuing the argument as he walked to the other side of the diner to serve someone else and then striding back over to kiss her and call a truce. She thinks about him coming back tonight to do the same thing, to compromise with her, to silently ask her forgiveness for his leaving, but she knows he won't. No matter how much she envisions him, she can't bring him back to stand before her as real blood and bone. _

_Luke turns and leaves after standing by her respectfully in a moment of silence, and she continues to stare at the plastic tabletop. He never promised to stay, she realizes. Not once did he tell her that he would suddenly grind his rebellious and bohemian life to a halt just to be with her. She has mistaken all of his interest and banter and kissing for implications of devotion. _Stupid girl, _she thinks spitefully, the voice in her head sounding almost poisonous. She has ended up falling right for the trap he never intended to lay. When he came back a year ago, after the car accident, she was so sure he would never leave her again. But had he ever said it? Of course not. There were so many things he'd never said . . ._

_She realizes that she's been scratching her fingernail into her thumb, and now she's bleeding. It almost makes her fall apart when she realizes she can't feel it. Break ups aren't supposed to be this hard or go this deep. High school romances blossom in a burst of color, and then they die almost as quickly, leaving you nothing but dried flower petals to press in-between the pages of a book and remember. She knows this. It's something she's known for a long time. It's not even like she's never had a boyfriend before; she has. She'll get over it with time, there's a light at the end of the tunnel . . . right?_

_She was shocked by his disappearance and she had no time to prepare herself for it. With Dean, the fissures in their relationship had been so prominent that breaking up was inevitable. It had even been what she wanted, what she _needed _. . . because there had been something more thrilling, more satisfying, more complex on the other side. But with _him_ . . . they had always been up and down. She expected the cracks between them to come and then heal themselves again. She had hardly even begun to explore him, to reach into him. Her breath still caught in her throat when he touched her. She still blushed when he stared at her. It had been so . . . new . . ._

_She stops the bleeding with her sleeve and takes the salt shaker off of the table, turning it over and over in her hands. What gave him the authority to just decide when everything was over? Wasn't it her decision, too? Isn't it still her decision?_

_For half a second, she entertains the thought of finding him, but that's only for half a second. He obviously does not want to be found, and even she has that hard grain of dignity in her that keeps her from acting so pathetic. Life is not like _Pride and Prejudice_, she knows this now. Second chances don't come custom-wrapped to your door. They were given one shot, and now it's over._

_She stops thinking about then and gives herself over to only emotions. The haunting sensation of him being here, even when he isn't, absorbs her completely. By the time she finally composes herself enough to wipe away the dried, crusty paths of tears on her face and stand up, darkness has fallen and her mother is sitting outside, waiting. She walks out slowly, like her legs are made of lead._

We were built on something that wasn't real,_ is the last thing she thinks before shutting the door behind her. It's the only thing that helps her explain his disappearance to her confused and betrayed heart. After she's outside, she remembers something Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. "Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." It cuts to her core and she pushes it away before preparing herself to pretend again._

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Her cell phone ring for Logan wasn't a silly one specified to his name, like her mother had suggested. It was clean, no-nonsense, just a full-toned doorbell sound. He probably wouldn't have minded if she fastened some sort of whimsical song or awful rap ballad to his file on her contact list just for fun, but for some reason she never had done it. It was too . . . what? Intimate? Personal? Immature?

The general, unspecified doorbell sound came from Rory's purse as she began to enter the movie theatre with Lorelai and Lane. "I'll just be a second," she pleaded, trying to ignore the "you're-stabbing-me-with-a-twenty-foot-sword" look that entered her mother's eyes. She pressed herself against the wall of the ticket booth as the two moved on without her.

"Hello?"

"Ace?"

She shifted her purse onto her other shoulder and tucked her hair behind her ear. The smell of burnt popcorn turned her stomach. A lot of things seemed to be turning her stomach. Today had not been a good day for her.

"Hey," she said quietly.

"I just wanted you to know I won't be in until late tonight." She heard something in the background, something that sounded like a strange kind of music mixed with half-choked laughter. In her innocence, she smiled.

"Did you and Zach and Brian decide to go out for awhile?" She asked, happy with him for agreeing to hang with Zach and Brian at all in the first place. It had taken a good bit of convincing to show him that, although they were weird, they were genuinely nice people and he needed to be around members of his own sex for awhile. They were open dictionaries on music, she had continued, and many a good Clapton conversation could be held with them.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, and almost instantly she felt her excitement die. "Well, no . . ." He trailed off, and she could feel him grasping at some excuse she would accept. A knot made its way into her stomach.

"You ditched them?" Her voice was cold.

"No, Ace, no . . . we just weren't really clicking . . . and they were busy, and I was busy, so maybe some other time . . ."

She felt her face harden. "Lane's my best friend."

"I know. I met her, remember? She's great."

"You didn't even try, did you?" She asked wonderingly, like someone who had just finally discovered something they had been looking for for a very long time. "You didn't." There was nothing accusing about the way she said it, just sad.

"Rory, don't. I'm here because I want to be with you, but you took off, and now I'm trying to do something other than sit around with guys I don't know and wait for you. Okay?" He was being cajoling now, trying to persuade her into seeing his side. He usually ended up winning. She again caught the sound of laughter, and this time realized it was a woman's.

"Where are you?"

"What?"  
"I asked you where you are."

"I'm just with some of my parents' friends," he said easily. Almost too easily. She desperately made herself believe him.

"I'll see you later tonight." Without waiting for an answer, because there was none he could give, she slapped her phone shut. There was a brief, overwhelming feeling of not being in control that seared through her body, of being helpless, hopeless, empty, of being powerless over her future. In a second, though, it had passed. She returned her phone to her purse, trying to think of what she was going to tell Lane. My boyfriend thinks he's too good for your boyfriend? Anger burned within her.

When she found Lorelai and Lane at the popcorn stand, they were already late for the movie. Her mother shoved a Coke and a huge box of Snowcaps in her arms before dragging her to the ticket line. "I can't decide what movie I want to see!" She exclaimed in frustration, tapping her foot on the floor.

"We can see both," Rory volunteered. That meant they wouldn't be home until past one in the morning. Her suggestion was only too happily accepted, and before she knew it they were sitting side by side in sinking faux velvet seats, stealing each other's candy.

_Let Logan worry,_ she thought, popping a Skittle into her mouth. _Let him think that I'm the one not coming back for a change._


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note:** It'll be a few days until I update, mostly because I need to write more (yeah, that kind of important side note), but I do have this done so far. I know this story's coming really fast, and I hope no one minds. 

I've just finally realized that Jess and Rory probably aren't getting back together on Gilmore Girls. That's sad. I wonder why they'd make such a unique chemistry between them just to kind of . . . let it die?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Five days later, Rory let Logan drive back to Yale. It was her peace offering for the coldness that had existed between them over the past two weeks, her statement that she was sorry about the way things had gone. All of her good intentions about bringing him to her hometown had failed. She knew he'd made himself come, that there were so many other things he'd rather be doing, but he gave those up to make her happy. She knew that. Spring break, in a Huntzberger's mind, was supposed to be about Florida or Mexico and string bikinis and bottomless margaritas.

She watched his face, mouth in a tight line and eyes expressionless, as he casually draped a hand over the wheel and fiddled with the radio. Her head kept replaying that feminine laugh she heard in the background of their phone call the night at the movie theatres. She was dying to ask him more about it, what her name had been, and how she knew his parents, but she didn't dare, not with things the way they were.

There was something silent that sat between them, heavy, weighing on their muted conversation like an actual physical being. At first, she tried to ignore it, but only ten minutes into their drive it was too pressing for her to pretend that it didn't exist.

She knew exactly what it was. Or more like who it was. He might as well be sprawled in the back seat, smoking a cigarette and silently watching her tense communication with her boyfriend, a smirk on his face. Or maybe – and this was worse – he would be locking eyes with her in the rearview mirror, leaning forward on his knees, his intense gaze driving her to _do_ something, anything, that would help ease this burning inside of her. She could almost see him, his presence was so tangible. And she knew, no matter how ignorant Logan was of some things, there was no way he couldn't feel her ex-boyfriend in the back seat, too.

"Thanks for coming with me," she ventured softly, hating that she was sounding like Bambi. She couldn't help it; Paris often compared her to princesses from Disney movies, and she was all Cinderella. _Why couldn't I have gotten some Ariel, or maybe a little Pocahontas?_

He nodded curtly, staring at the road. "You're welcome." She twirled a strand of hair around her finger as he finally found a radio station he liked and kept it there as eighties rock murmured from the speakers. He didn't turn up the volume.

"Logan . . . I don't know what you think, but . . ." She mentally scolded herself for starting that sentence before she'd thought of a satisfactory way to end it. This was not how Rory Gilmore functioned. She always had a step by step plan before she did anything. But yet . . . when it came to Jess, all her plans seemed to die a quick and senseless death. "I'm not . . . I'm with you," she finished lamely, and she realized she didn't even sound convincing to herself.

He turned and a shadow of a grin appeared on his lips, signifying that he wasn't looking at the power behind the words but just the words themselves. "I know, Ace," he answered, pulling his sunglasses down off his forehead as they rounded a bend and sunlight streamed through the windshield. "We don't have to talk about it anymore."

"Yeah, I know." She smiled back at him, resting her elbow on the door, and the queasy feeling she got somewhere inside was worse than the tinge of carsickness that wrestled with her. _We don't have to talk about it. _All of the mistakes she'd made in relationships before this one had their root in that one lie: _We don't have to talk about._

This time is different. It is. We _don't_ have to talk about it. There's nothing to talk about.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"The printers want to meet with you next week."

Jess was sitting on the steps in front of the publishing house, idly twisting a ballpoint pen between his fingers. It had just rained, and for the first time in a long time he was consciously inhaling that fresh April rain scent. Of course, it was also mixed with the peculiar odors that belonged to a city – sweat, smoke, car exhaust, unnamed substances floating in pipes – but he was used to that.

"Huh," was all he said in reply, stretching his legs out across the concrete stairs and watching as a bus slowed to a stop across the street. Acrid smoke wafted from its tailpipe and dissolved into the air as people filed silently down the steps and along the sidewalk. Not one of them stopped to look at the sky or the faces of their fellow passengers or the buildings. He wondered if he lived like that without knowing it. Probably.

"It's a really important meeting," Leo pressed, completely oblivious to how Jess was basically ignoring him. He never even tried to tame his frizzy hair, and in the humidity that always resulted from rain made it surround his face like a cloud, making him look more than a little ridiculous. Jess tried to remember where he had first met Leo, and eventually recalled the bar in the theater district about five months ago. Now _that_ had been an interesting evening.

"Do you want me to lie and say that I'll definitely be there to make you feel better?" Jess asked, thumping a packet of paper absentmindedly on his leg. He was pissed at the printers at the moment, and rather than dwelling on how they were ripping him off, he preferred to wonder if Leo ever considered that special shampoo in the lime green bottle.

Leo looked relieved. "Oh, would you?"

Jess shook his head at this patheticness and shifted on the stairs. "No," he answered calmly. A homeless bum was sitting on a pile of trash bags a few buildings down, and he wondered what had happened to the man to bring him there. _What do you mean, you wonder what happened? You were two bucks short of ending up the same way yourself. You make a few mistakes and before you know it, you're lost._

Leo swore before turning around to go inside, but Jess knew he really wasn't angry and had expected Jess' reaction. Strangely – actually, almost too strangely – Jess had the makings of an excellent businessman. His growing up on the streets of the city ensured that he always knew when it was worth striking a compromise and when it was worth standing his ground, when someone was bullshitting him and when they were being honest, when he should intimidate and when he should slip into the shadows. Funny how life worked out sometimes.

He was trying to write a second novel, but it wasn't going very well. His mind couldn't push past the opening chapter. He was just so distracted, lately, with all kinds of things. Not that he hadn't always been distracted; he just had to remember how to deal with it.

Darkness was falling fast, and just a few minutes later it was the awkward grey color of night in metropolises, black pierced everywhere with light. He was idly flipping through the paper packet, a manuscript that had been sent to him in the mail this week. It was from an author that they had previously published, but this second piece was so incredibly cliché that he was finding it hard to stomach. Most publishers wouldn't turn down a writer that they had already accepted once, but Jess wasn't like most publishers. He unceremoniously stood up and dropped it the metal trashcan by the steps before going up the stairs and into the building.

Chris and Matthew, two other workers who boarded with him upstairs, were making dinner in the kitchen. He was probably the most qualified cook in the place – he had worked a year in a diner – but they didn't know that about him. It was one of the many parts of himself that he kept hidden. In fact, they really knew nothing about his past whatsoever, except that he came here and helped start up the publishing house. Nothing about Connecticut, California, or New York ever surfaced in their superficial conversations.

Leaning silently against the doorpost, he shook his head as Matthew chopped up an onion and accidentally cut himself. He would jump in to help, but maybe Rory had been right and he was a tad bit sadistic.

That made him pause. He had blocked out Rory for weeks. He didn't like things that made him vulnerable, that had the power to hurt him, and thoughts of Rory undeniably, definitely, positively had that power. How could he forget seeing her standing there barefoot on her lawn, tears splatting on the ground, looking so small in her pink pajamas? He could still envision her long brown hair clinging to her damp cheeks and her big doe eyes staring at him like he were some kind of nightmare.

Dammit. That was exactly why he tried not to think about her.

He remembered asking her to visit the publishing house, and he remembered her saying that she would, but that had been at a moment of weakness, when she had hurt him and would've said anything to make it better. It was at one in the morning, it was hardly even real. He'd left it so undefined that he knew nothing was going to happen. She was back at Yale now, studying to be an overseas correspondent, living the good life with her ass of a boyfriend. Ah . . . in and out of each other's lives, that was the role they had somehow fallen into playing.

"Yeah, he's right here," Leo's voice came from the Truncheon main room, out near the front door, and a few seconds later followed that up with "Jess!"

Jess knew better than to hope. It left him raw whenever he dared to do it when he was younger, so now there was no room for it in his system. He denied his heart the right to skip a beat or pound a little faster. _No way it's her. No way._ He walked out from the kitchen, his dark eyes brooding, and continued to think those two words. _No way._

But when he saw the blonde girl standing by the door in tight jeans and a low slung shirt, he knew that he was a liar. He had been hoping.

He didn't say anything to her, but acknowledged her with a half nod. Bailey was a writer, too, or so she claimed; they had met when she came to Truncheon in an attempt to get a collection of short stories published. Jess disliked flowery short stories in general and hated Bailey's even more, and when he bluntly told her so she didn't run out crying like most women would have done. Instead, she asked him out. Why he had accepted he couldn't even remember, but after a short one night stand he watched her walk off and didn't think about her anymore. That had been three months ago, and yet here she was, looking at him expectantly. He got an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Leo sensed the very awkward conversation that was about to crop up and grabbed his jacket. "We're out of beer," he muttered almost embarrassedly, although Jess knew for a fact they weren't. He went outside and Jess watched him walk down the sidewalk.

"So . . . I was just around and I thought I'd drop by," Bailey said nervously, and he searched for and found the tiny tattoo he remembered right above her hipbone. The fact that he could see her hipbone while she was apparently fully dressed was a little bit disturbing to him. He nodded again.

"Um . . . do you want to go grab some food or something?" She asked. He couldn't stop himself from looking at her with a raised eyebrow. She was the type of girl who had participated in many flings, probably more than she could remember, and she knew the protocol, she _had_ to. You got together because of some demon or another, you did the shameful thing that you had to do to temporarily ease the pain, and then you walked out the next morning. There was no follow up. "I mean, we could just get a drink if you wanted to."

He couldn't hold it back this time. "I think you're supposed to get the drink before the sex," he commented, knowing he sounded a little heartless, but he wasn't in the best of moods. He stared at her mercilessly and she bit her lip.

"I know," she said, with a painful laugh. "Trust me, I know. But I . . . I thought maybe we . . . could start over." She dragged her fingernails across her pant leg.

He wanted to laugh at the irony. Start over? They hadn't even started anything. Instead, he asked one word. "Why?"

She shook her head, and he noticed that she didn't have her ears pierced. For some reason, he had thought she did. He tried not to think about anything else. It wouldn't help. "Because," she answered slowly, obviously unprepared for having to convince him. "Why not? You got something better to do?"

Her words cut to his core. He wanted so very badly to have something better to do, anything. He was convinced that his life had changed, that he had meaning and purpose, and yet here he was, watching two guys cook and trying not to drown in memories of something that was broken. He couldn't write, he couldn't concentrate enough to read, and he couldn't let himself think.

But he couldn't be with another woman either. It made him so angry that he tasted it in his throat. _Another_ woman. That suggested there was already a woman, and he hated himself for it, hated himself because she was not his and she would never be his, just this elusive mist that kept dancing in and out of his fingertips. How many times did she have to say no before it sunk in?

_God. How did it end up like this?_

"Go home," he said quietly, praying up until the second he said it that he could get past this unforeseen wall that held him back from any sense of normality. He couldn't. His stomach gave a vicious lurch at the thought of sitting down with Bailey over coffee or at a movie, even a more painful one than it did when he vaguely remembered having sex with her.

When she nodded and left without saying anything, he stood there silently for a minute. There were a million unspoken thoughts running through his head, a thousand shattered memories tearing into his skin, a hundred ghosts from his past shadowing his eyes. And then, quite abruptly, he turned around, climbed the stairs, and locked himself into his bedroom. Throwing the window open, he let the smoggy evening air cling to his skin and hair and clothes as he tore the only chapter he had written for his new book into pieces as numerous as his pain.

_"We said a few words; she took me home with her ... Then I went through the banal scene. It passed like a sudden hurtling down. Again, I am on the pavement, and I am not at peace as I had hoped. An immense confusion bewilders me. I see too deep and too much."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The sweet, slightly chilly air of spring at Yale brushed Rory's neck and cheeks as she crossed the campus for her next class. Usually she walked with someone, but this morning she was engrossed in a book and didn't even bother to look for anyone she knew. It was something that she had never been good at when she was younger, walking while reading, but eventually it became second nature to her.

She felt two hands on her waist and let out a little shriek, but when she saw Logan's shoulder next to hers she smiled an embarrassed smile. "You know better than to sneak up on me while I'm reading," she chided gently, her shoes echoing against the concrete and her knitted sweater peaking out from a light jacket. There were white, puffy clouds that dotted the sky, and one blocked the sun momentarily, casting Logan's face in shadows.

"Sorry," he shrugged, taking some of her notebooks and binders out of her arms and carrying them for her. "You wouldn't have heard me if I'd said anything." This, she knew, was true. She zoned out when she read. It was probably a little dangerous. "You have McKellan next, right?"

She looked at him curiously; he had never expressed an interest in knowing her schedule before. That was more or less the kind of thing Dean would have wanted to memorize. She decided not to think about him, because thinking about him irrevocably chained her to thinking about someone else she'd prefer to avoid. "Yeah," she answered, adjusting her hair so that it was blown away from her face instead of into it. The cloud cleared. "And then I'm done for today."

"Good," he grinned, fixing his collar with his free hand and brushing against her as they walked. "Have dinner with me tonight." It was almost a command, but cloaked in such an irresistible tone that Rory didn't object to it. She wondered if that were a bad thing.

"Okay." She smiled back and took her books back as they neared a towering stone building. "What time?"

"Pick you up at seven?"

"Sounds good." She kissed him goodbye and then he was gone, disappearing around a corner to go do God knew what.

She had gotten used to that, she realized, to the definiteness. How badly she had wanted it two years ago, something rock solid and steady to rest her romantic life on. She briefly remembered the phone call she'd made that night after the hockey game, how angry she had been, how forgotten she'd felt. She watched the devotion of Dave to Lane and Dean to Lindsay, and she realized how cheated she was. But even as she thought about it now, she instantly recalled walking out those double doors and seeing him sitting on the roof of his car, waiting, tentatively holding earplugs out to her and trying to communicate that he hadn't forgotten about her at all.

And for the first time since then, she allowed herself to think what she had so carefully tried to forget: she had been wrong. She hadn't wanted definiteness. She was in love with the unpredictability, infatuated with the adventure, obsessed with the impulsive. There was something almost dark but beautiful about it, something that drew her in so hard and so fast it nearly killed her but left her grabbing for more as long as she could and maybe, just maybe, even after she couldn't.

The realization was a painful one. She hated thinking about him. It was too tender of a spot for her, a wound that she had poured salt on, a burn that wouldn't heal. He was gone, out of her life, and there was no room in her anymore for that erratic and passionate ride he'd taken her on. She was a Yale student, she had a boyfriend, and he was too rootless to stick around for long. Even with his new life, even with this new characteristic of maturity that seemed to have grown within him, he was a wanderer at heart. He'd left her in the dust again, but this time he didn't even so much as glance back. She wondered if he'd glanced back all the other times or if those had just been in her mind.

_Leave it alone. God, just leave it alone._

She had to stop this. Years couldn't keep passing her by with this one burden weighing on her. She had to avoid him at all costs in the future; she had to forbid herself from ever seeing Jess Mariano again. He had hurt her . . . he'd hurt her so deeply that sometimes she even forgot what it felt like before she was scarred, before he came into her life. He'd selfishly torn into her, thrown her carefully orchestrated world around until it was nothing but tatters, left her without even stopping to glance at her tears. She couldn't let herself trust him again.

She tried to ignore that ease they'd rediscovered last month, that automatic vulnerability she had with him, that confidence they'd unknowingly shared, because if she remembered that she might just realize that he was one of the few people in the world she really could trust. Ironic.

As class started, she engaged whole-heartedly in discussion and debate, scribbling furious notes in her notebook and hungrily reading all the text assigned to her. That was why she found it strange when, later, she couldn't remember a single word the professor had spoken.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"My parents," Logan explained, taking a card out of his pocket and slicing it through the electronic scanner in the door, "own a hotel room here." He refused to look at her face as he turned the handle and ushered her inside, his feet sinking into the plush carpet of the hallway. He was almost too afraid to, almost scared to admit even to himself what he was trying to do. He remembered the curious look in her eyes as they drove home from the restaurant and passed Yale without him saying a word, but she had remained silent. How he'd gotten her up here without any questions he didn't know; maybe she'd assumed they were going for coffee or dessert or something in the hotel café, and he felt uncomfortable at the thought that she was just now realizing what his goal was.

The suite was beautiful, undeniably the best one in the entire hotel. Flames leapt in the hearth of a fireplace made out of clay mosaic, and an oversized emerald suede couch flanked by matching armchairs were clustered around a soft down rug thrown over the hardwood. Huge paintings were framed on the walls, their rich, deep colors lustrous under the orange glow of the fire. Bowls of fruit and vases of flowers were placed strategically with dripping potted plants in corners and on end tables. A bottle of champagne, wrapped in a towel, had been buried in an ice chest that sat on the floor by the fireplace.

Even Rory's natural innocence couldn't completely cloister her from the implications so obviously present. Her eyes wide with surprise and uncertainty, she stayed by the door and found the iced champagne, the door open to the bedroom, the firelight. Something heavy and scared jumped in her throat and pressed against her heart. Her hand clenched involuntarily by her hip as she backed against the wall and turned her questioning gaze to Logan.

_No. He wouldn't bring me here for . . . not for . . . not without telling me._

He looked at her for the first time since they had entered the elevator, and the confident grin he flashed at her made her feel even worse. She silently watched him uncork the champagne and pour it into two glasses. He offered one to her and she shook her head.

"I don't drink," she objected quietly. He nodded and downed his own while her thoughts raced at a hundred miles an hour, trying to come up with some way that would get her out of this situation without making him angry. She wasn't mad at him. She'd been dating him for three months, and he was the kind of guy who was used to getting physical by the first week. He just had to understand that she wasn't like that.

"Do your parents keep any movies here?" She asked, her voice trembling, as she spotted a television in an adjoining room. She nervously tangled her fingers around her purse strap and tried to think about something calming, anything that would ease her fears. Immediately and without thinking about it, she began to go through verb tenses in her head. _Do, doing, did, have done. Rising, rising, rose, have risen. _

He chuckled. "They aren't exactly movie freaks," he answered almost carelessly, putting his glass aside. Her breath caught in her throat as he began to walk closer to her, but not from anticipation. There were only a few feet in between them now, the space getting smaller and smaller with each second that passed. She didn't know what to do; there were no words she could think of to say. _Dive, diving, dove, have dived. Shrink, shrinking, shrank, have shrunk. _The walls of the spacious room seemed suddenly very claustrophobic.

He put his hands on her hips lightly, in a way that he thought was giving her a chance to escape, but she was too petrified to move. He didn't know this. All he was aware of was her doe eyes, her shallow breathing, the way her hands suddenly snapped open and her purse fell to the floor. None of these seemed like negative reactions to him. Carefully, like she might burst, he touched her lips with his, feeling how she was trembling. She didn't respond; she didn't even blink.

It was hard to say exactly what Rory was thinking at that moment. Verbs had flown from her mind, and now she felt strangely numb and detached. She thought of a million different ways to get out, but was able to go through with none of them. Her extreme inexperience, even after what had happened with Dean, taught her nothing of any help in escaping without hurting Logan. She felt him working on her, felt him pulling her forward, and suddenly he had pushed her back onto the sofa and was leaning over her. Her spring dress felt thin and she was exposed. She almost wanted to cry.

Someone's words echoed again and again in her ear: _You're so special . . . you're so special . . . you're so special . . ._

She tried to lose herself like she had before, tried to let the ship go down without its captain. _Don't think._ His lips moved to her collarbone and then swept across her clothed belly as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to make her mind go blank. It wasn't working. It was too soon, it was too much, it was too unexpected!

In a swift movement that both terrified her and alerted her to his familiarity with such things, her dress lay pooled on the ground. That was what it took to shock her back into action. His hands began to roam her skin in a way that stabbed into her modesty, and enough was enough. He had taken off his shirt and pants and was moving to her bra hook when she began to try to sit up. "Stop! What are you _doing_?!" She spoke forcefully, as if she had been yelling "No!" for the past two minutes, when in reality she hadn't said a word.

There was a heartbeat of silence, when no one moved, and then Logan sat up. Tears stung her eyes as she collected her clothes off the floor and covered her body, too shaken to put them on. She was shaking uncontrollably, unable to process what almost happened. The last time she had let someone so close to her, it ruined _everything_. Numbly, she huddled in a noiseless, tearstained heap underneath her dress.

Finally, after Logan had fastened his pants and was holding his shirt in his lap, she managed to open up her mouth enough to let out a little squeak. "I'm sorry." What she was apologizing for she couldn't quite tell; her inability to go far or her unwillingness to let him touch her or the mixed signals she had been sending him? Maybe it was something else entirely, something that had to do with her past. It breathed down her neck and tore them apart, isolating them from each other.

He didn't say anything, but just stood up and walked over to a cabinet by the fireplace. After scrounging around, he straightened with a bottle of brandy in his hand and poured himself a glass before turning and staring at her. Like she had been jolted with a bolt of electricity, she yanked her dress on and tried to hide herself in the cushioning of the sofa.

"You should have said something earlier," he finally muttered, his eyes closed as he downed the burning amber. She watched him and wondered why he had to do that, why he drank with her right here.

"_You_ should have said something earlier," she retorted, her mind starting to work again, and all the anger she'd bit back flamed up. He hadn't even asked her if it was okay that they come upstairs, alone, into a suite. He hadn't asked her if she wanted him to touch her or kiss her. What kind of man was he? Didn't he know _anything_ about her, about her discretion, about all of her fears?

"Dammit, Rory, what did you think I brought you up here for?" He sounded bitter and cold and mean. Instead of shaming her, it just made her more furious. She stood up, too, and crossed her arms across her chest.

"I don't know! How was I supposed to know?! You didn't even _ask_ me," she spat back, lethal poison darts shooting out of her stare. "And why are you so obsessed with that, anyway? Why can't we ever just talk?"

She watched his face metamorphose from one of frustration to something deeper, angrier, something that was closer to hurt. He stared at her stonily before he spoke. "How long did you date that other guy before sleeping with _him_?"

She looked at him like he had slapped her, and it would have been better if he had. There was no question in her mind who he was talking about; it wasn't Dean. Her lips pressed together in a thin line and she walked over to the entryway and picked up her purse. Without even meeting his eyes, she slipped out the door and shut it behind her. It wasn't until she was in the elevator that she sank against the wall and sobbed.  
_  
"There is a crack in everything.  
That's how the light gets in."_


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:** Wow, I definitely didn't expect all the reviews. They make me very happy. And I know some of you are getting frustrated with Logan . . . this should be a good chapter for you . . . just let the story unfold. I'm not exactly sure how long it'll end up being, but thanks for sticking with it this long.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jess lay sprawled across his bed, socked feet dangling at an odd angle off into empty space, head resting on a mashed pillow propped up against the wall. He wasn't entirely comfortable, but hell, he was so used to it that he didn't even notice. His body, he liked to think, was kind of immune to being bruised and beat up. Somewhere around sixth grade, he'd gotten into a situation that had left him one big scab, and ever since then he didn't mind pain anymore. At least not physically.

He was trying to write a business letter to a literature foundation for a grant. Generally speaking, he was pretty good at writing business letters, but the words just weren't coming. He thought about putting something like "Your sick patron is gonna kick the bucket soon, so maybe you can give us an advance of his donation that's in his will" or "Do you honestly have a committee just devoted to cover illustrations?" but he didn't think that would go over too well. He'd just finished spelling out the term congenital – it actually kind of made sense in context – when the phone by his bed rang. Since this wasn't a Marriot and every boarder shared the same line, he didn't pick it up. People rarely called him after seven, because that would be for personal, non-work related reasons, and he didn't have a lot of emotional ties with people. Sometimes he answered the phone just to make it shut up, but usually he let someone else get it. He scratched his knee as the ringing stopped.

There was a pounding on his door and then he heard Chris' voice. "Jess! Why don't you ever pick up the damn phone?" He shifted on the bed and sat up a little, running through a mental list of contacts in his head and wondering who in the hell would be calling him after hours. The last time he'd gotten a call late at night had been - and then he knew.

God.

"Go to sleep, it's past your bedtime," he mocked back through the door, and then he grabbed the phone off its cradle and pressed the talk button. He simply stared at it for a moment, seriously considering hanging up, hating how he couldn't cleanly break away from her, how there were always jagged edges that kept him attached. He wanted to put the phone back, but he couldn't. He hated that, too.

"Rory?"

He heard her crying, again, and prayed he hadn't accidentally done something to hurt her, again. In his mind, he saw her sitting in a dark room with the shades pulled down and hair sticking to her face, her tiny body pulled together. He turned off the lamp by his own bed so that he, too, was in the dark. _Bring me down with you_, he thought, even though he knew his fragile state might not be able to bear it.

"How'd you know it was me?" She was trying and failing to mask the tears in her voice.

"I'm not exactly in many people's address books," he answered, and he didn't try to hurry her like he had last time. There was something different now, something almost comfortable, something that gave him a reason to lie back all the way on his mattress and count his breaths until she spoke again.

"I . . . I'm lonely," she whispered, and the way she said it made a piece of him break, causing him that pain which made him suffer far more than any physical pain, the one pain he couldn't numb himself to. It was a hard thing for him, to break, because in order to break you had to care first, which he didn't like to do. "I didn't know who else to call."

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to that, because there were definitely other people that she could have called, so he didn't say anything.

"How's work going?"

He stretched out and shifted the phone to his other ear, realizing that she needed someone to talk to and preparing himself to complete the task. He wasn't much of a talker, but he wasn't about to turn her away. "It's going," he answered, having to almost shoot himself to get past a monosyllabic response. "I'm broke. Probably make poor college kids look like Gates."

She laughed, and that made her cough. He fought the urge to ask her what had happened, knowing that she'd only tell him in her own time if she decided to tell him at all. His mind started jumping with conclusions, and he had to close his eyes to make it stop. "Whatever happened to seeing where you go? To just working when you need money?"

"Well, I made a pretty important discovery since then."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Almost Freudian." He moved a book from where it was digging into his back and laid it on his chest. "I _always_ need money."

This time, her laugh seemed less fake, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't even known he'd been holding. Shadows danced on his ceiling, bending and swaying like branches.

"What book are you reading?"

"Why do you always ask me that?"

There was a hesitation, and then she admitted, "Because I always want to read what you read."

He smiled, despite the situation and despite himself. "Huh. The sincerest form of flattery," he said softly, the closest thing to tenderness he'd felt in a long time rising up somewhere in his chest. The silence she gave him said everything, and he felt himself spiraling again in that strange place where color and sound went by so fast it seemed they didn't exist.

"_The Kitchen God's Wife_," he finally answered, running his fingers over those exact words on the cover of the book he was holding. He tried to stop envisioning what she was doing; it only made him wish for things that he couldn't have, which was totally against his principles. Needing to hold something like he always did when he was nervous, he fumbled in his jean pocket for a cigarette and played with it against his fingers, without even thinking once about lighting it.

"Amy Tan," she said, and she sounded almost normal again. "Do you like it?"

"Not really." The cigarette dropped to the floor and he didn't bother to pick it up. He'd probably forget about it, step on it, and smudge nicotine and tobacco all into the old, ratty carpet. He glanced at the floor. Ah, well, nicotine and tobacco were the least of the carpet's worries. When he found a stain that looked like blood, he turned away and glanced back up at the ceiling.

"I thought everyone liked Amy Tan." This time, her voice was defensive.

"Maybe," he replied nonchalantly, knowing his indifference was one way to draw her in deeper, as demented as it seemed. He wanted her to forget whatever had made her sad. He wanted her to forget anything that had ever made her sad.

_Oh, yeah. Me. Right._

"I don't really like her either."

He wanted to grin, but he knew she'd hear it through the phone, so he managed to keep his face straight. "Then why'd you almost quarter me for it?"

"Sometimes you need to be given a hard time," she answered simply. He caught the sadness in her words and he sunk back deeper into the pillows. He looked out the window and watched a TV in the next door apartment building turn on, a bluish glow emitting through his blinds.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I guess so." There was really nothing that could be added onto that. He waited, waited just like he had every day for the last two damn years. Not that he had the right to complain; he was the one who'd left. Something in him burned.

"I'm sorry for . . . for just calling you like this, without any warning or anything, and not even during the daytime," she rambled, suddenly aware of the awkward turn the conversation had taken. He smirked to himself, not caring if she heard it or not.

"You're no less scary in the daytime than in the nighttime, so it doesn't make too much of a difference." He wondered if he really meant it, if she _did_ scare him. He felt a little disgusted with himself, almost ashamed, and knew what the answer was. Or maybe not. Maybe she didn't scare him, but the things he thought did, the things he couldn't control, the circumstances from hell that they were always in.

"But maybe you had plans with friends or –"

"Rory, remember who you're talking to."

He heard the mocking before it actually came. "Oh, I thought you were all social now."

"What?"

"You know, being a businessman and all. I thought it'd be teas with the English, sushi with the Japanese, luncheons with the Germans, brunch with –"

He cut her off, shaking his head. "Don't even associate me with the word 'brunch.'"

"Do you have a schedule planner?" She asked, and by now he'd forgotten about her tears, too. He'd even forgotten that there was a state sitting in-between them, a couple of years of painful history that had separated them, a boyfriend with khakis and designer sunglasses who created a name-label wall that divided them.

"No," he answered triumphantly, and it was true. He didn't shy away from work, and – although he hated to admit it – he even liked the work he was doing, but he point blank refused to get a planner. That would be far too Gucci for him.

"I've had one since I was five."

"Huh," he said slowly. "Do you want me to feel a little bit repulsed or a little bit pitying?"

There was a pause, and he knew the easy banter they'd just found was about to end. "You're . . . the same, but different." She appeared to be trying to search for some other way to say it, but the silence suggested she could think of nothing.

"I accidentally turned on a soap opera yesterday. I might never be exactly one-hundred percent again." It was a last futile attempt to dodge her analysis of him that he felt coming, but it was useless, as he'd known it would be.

"No . . . you . . . you're . . . I recognize you by how you talk, but not by the look you get sometimes," she whispered. What she said was so suddenly intimate that he had to close his eyes again. He didn't say anything. "What . . . what was it? What did I . . . see? What's . . . different?" He heard her breath catch in her throat as she forced herself to continuing respiring.

He couldn't believe she was asking him this. The idea that she'd notice something different in him, something maybe good, hadn't crossed his mind. And it _hurt_. It nearly killed him. She didn't know, she didn't know that this part of him had always been there and he just hadn't let her see it before. She only saw it now, now that it was too damn late.

"Rory –"

"I know you don't want to tell me," she said sadly, and she was right. He didn't like to open himself up to her, because when all was said and done it always felt like she'd taken an ax and ravaged through his whole system. He couldn't put his head on the chopping block.

He became aware that he should say something. For several moments, he fought against the big air bubble that was sitting on his tongue. "Nothing's different," he finally said, well aware that it was a lie and well aware that he hated lying to her and well aware that there was nothing else he could do.

It would be totally characteristic of her to make some excuse to get off the phone right now, just as it would be totally characteristic of him to hang up without saying another word, but somehow, neither of them acted characteristically. He heard her lie down on something. "That's not true," she accused quietly.

He was suddenly very angry with her, angry that she didn't seem to know what she was doing to him by shoving him out of her life just to reel him back in. God, even heartless fisherman killed a fish if they weren't just going to let it swim back to sea. He wanted to tell her to go back to her boyfriend, to this new life she was building for herself, to Yale, to everything he'd never be able to get to, but he didn't. Even now, he couldn't, which made him madder. He wished that she could've just called Lane when she started to cry. "Rory," he said lowly, a warning tone in his voice.

"Okay," was all she answered with. And somehow, that got to him even more than if she'd demanded the truth from him. It was her giving up, her saying he'd won, which was something he thought he'd wanted, but now the victory felt hollow and bitter, like he'd cheated to get it. Like he cheated her. It made her into the victim, the one thing that he really didn't like doing. What did she want from him? A confession in blood?

"Jesus. What do you want me to say?"

She seemed to realize she'd crossed into delicate territory. "Never mind," she whispered quickly.

That didn't satisfy him. He tore a hand through his hair and wished he'd lit the cigarette, but he wasn't about to tell her what had changed him. How could she not already know? How was that even possible that she didn't see? He wasn't the type of guy to answer honestly: _Losing you is what made everything different. Losing you taught me things._ In fact, he didn't even want to say that to himself.

He took a deep breath. All the things he'd told himself about when she first called, about not pushing her to admit or explain anything, were acting as kind of annoying barriers. Never one to obey barriers, he tore through them, and yet again the phrase _consequences be damned_ seemed appropriate. "What happened?"

She didn't ask him to clarify as to what he was referring to; she knew. "Logan and I . . . we . . ." There was a pause, like she hadn't stopped to think this far herself. He accidentally tore a page of _The Kitchen God's Wife_. "We broke up," she finally finished, almost a little unsurely.

There were a lot of emotions that flooded through him at that statement, and he wasn't about to try and sort them out. They left him feeling dizzy and jaded and cynical all at the same time. One sarcastic thought managed to fight its way to the top among all the rest. _That's great. Twist the knife, why don't you?_

"Okay," he said, knowing he couldn't stay silent and knowing he couldn't trust himself with any real words at the moment.

If she was disappointed by his lack of reaction, she didn't show it. He could hear tears again, and the brief spell of forgetfulness they'd both enjoyed was gone. She remembered all too clearly why she'd been crying in the first place, and it wasn't him after all. He'd thought he'd be relieved to know it wasn't him this time, but he wasn't. "I don't know why I just told you that," she confessed with a raw voice.

She'd picked a hell of a time to start being honest. "Me neither."

There was a rustle on the line and the sound of yelling before loud beeps alerted him that someone else upstairs was trying to make a call. He recognized Chris' voice as he stated "It's not ringing!" to someone else who was apparently in his room. Jess groaned at the timing.

"Dammit. Why do you think that might be, Einstein?"

"Oh, Jess. Jeez. I'm sorry, man," Chris fumbled, and Jess realized with a tinge of amusement that he sounded a little scared. Not very scared though. Not enough to make him feel bad. There was a click, and silence reigned again.

"We . . . all share a line," he explained awkwardly, not knowing if he wanted to resume the conversation they'd been having.

"Oh."

He remembered the name Logan and decided he didn't, at least not right now. He knew, even as he did it, that it was stupid to assume he'd ever get a second chance after this one, but he'd always been good at screwing things up. "I'm tying up the phone." Damn. He hadn't meant to sound like he was blaming her. Why, oh _why_, was he so bad at this?

"This is long distance for me. I need to go to," she said almost angrily, as if protecting herself. He exhaled loudly in frustration.

"I want to talk to you again," he muttered, wishing there was something better to say, but half wishing he could pretend like he didn't care, too.

"Maybe when you get your very own phone line," she bit, trying to sound joking. He knew her well enough to know she was hurt nonetheless and trying to get back at him. His eyes closed painfully as he sat up.

"Rory –"

"Or you could finally cave and get a cell phone. That would work, too."

Now he was annoyed. Okay, she could win if it was that important to her. "Cell phones are pointless," he returned.

"So are empty promises," she answered, and he sat there, dumbfounded, as there was a soft click and the line went dead. Numbly, he forgot to breathe, forgot everything except for the last four words she spoke to him that were tearing him apart. _Dammit. You let her in again, and she had a freaking chainsaw._

"Um . . . Jess . . . are you done? I need to call someone," he heard in his ear. It was Chris' voice again.

Graham Green had said it best. _Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim_. He felt something burning in the back of his eyes, but true to his nature, he did not flinch. "Yeah, I'm done."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rory usually called her mom before she showed up on their doorstep, but this time she didn't. Part of it was that she had gotten slightly territorial and hated the idea of having to call before she went to her own house, and part of it was that she didn't really think she was going to go until she put her car into park in the gravel driveway. It was really late now, almost one in the morning, but she'd felt so stifled in her dorm room that the very idea of staying there one more second was enough to make her suicidal. It hadn't been a good night.

The key was where it always was, under the turtle shaped umbrella stand by the door. She let herself in without making a sound. She locked the door behind her and took off her shoes before quietly slipping down the hallway and into her room.

Something in her felt kind of warm again when she saw that all of her things were still completely undisturbed. A hairband she'd left on her dresser was still there, the book she'd been reading was still open on her desk, and the clothes she'd picked her outfits from were still flung out on her bed. It wasn't carelessness that left everything just so, that she knew. Clearing the clothes off, she lay down on her comforter and stared through wisps of long hair at the shapes of shadows on her curtains.

There was too much to think about; it was too dangerous. Suddenly she got up, grabbed a robe and a pair of slippers, and went into the bathroom. She turned the shower onto scalding hot and sat on the floor, watching as steam issued from behind the curtain and clouded the air until she could hardly see. The whole time she managed to keep her mind blessedly blank, not allowing a name or a memory to drift across it. Beads of moisture clung to the floral wallpaper and ran down the mirror. Finally, she got up and stripped herself of her spring dress, letting it fall and then mashing it with her foot until it was under the sink. When she stepped into the shower, the water burned her delicate, baby soft skin and made it red and angry. It hurt.

She lost count of how many times she scrubbed herself with soap, again and again, letting rivers of bubbles cascade down her back and stomach, into her belly button, down to her toes. She felt so violated that she wondered if maybe she'd let Logan go all the way, or if maybe he'd raped her, but somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered stopping him before things went that far. So why did she feel like this? Shampoo and conditioner and soap and water and tears ran down her face, making her eyes sting and her nose burn.

Finally, she turned off the water and stood there dripping for a little while before grabbing a soft, down towel and padding herself dry with it. Her hands were pink and pruney; she almost didn't recognize them. She tied her robe around her and jammed her feet into slippers, stopping once to glance at the way her hair twisted wet and soaked around her cheeks and her eyes were red both from crying and from being irritated. She didn't feel any cleaner, and hated how her purity seemed so far away now in every way.

When she opened the door, one lone light was on in the kitchen and her mother was at the table with a coffeepot and two mugs in front of her. She almost cried when she realized how relieved she was to see her mom, how familiar she seemed, how much she'd needed her without even knowing it.

Without saying anything, Lorelai stood up and walked over to her daughter, feeling her own heart constrict when Rory's body wracked with sobs in her arms.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"The worst part," Rory said shakily, staring down into the coffee that her mother had poured out for her, "wasn't that he tried to sleep with me." Her feet were cold now. Everything felt cold. She gripped the mug tighter. "It was that I . . . I didn't know what to do," she whispered, refusing to meet Lorelai's eyes. "I just laid there. I didn't try to stop him at all."

It was taking every ounce of self control in Lorelai's entire body not to completely freak out, to demand Logan's blood as payment for having treated her daughter like this, to go tear him into pieces or gouge out his eyes or bludgeon him with a baseball bat. She was furious, the kind of furious that usually resulted in long prison sentences or stealing off to Canada in the middle of the night. But she also knew that hearing her rant about Logan wasn't what Rory needed right now, and even though she hated this, she loved Rory more. "But you _did_ stop him," she reminded her, searching Rory's face.

"It took me too long. I shouldn't have even gone upstairs with him." Rory took a deep breath. So far, she'd purposely left what had happened after the hotel fiasco out of her story. It wasn't just that she knew her mother wouldn't be happy; it was that she was already overloaded with chaos and didn't think she could bear to relate the rest of the night's events to herself. She hadn't even allowed her mind to remember the phone call, what he'd said, or what she'd said back. It was too painful. It was almost even worse.

"It'll be okay," her mom said softly, covering her hand with her own. She looked up into Lorelai's eyes. _No, it won't_, she thought, and even she was unsure of what she was thinking about, of who she was thinking about. A tear plopped down into her coffee.

She felt her mother pull her up from the chair and lead her into her bedroom. Even though the bed was small, they both fit on it, and she buried herself in Lorelai's warm outline like she hadn't done since she was a very little girl. Her body shook with sobs that made no noise until slowly, painfully, she fell asleep.

Lorelai continued to stroke her hair, even after she recognized the deep, dreamy breaths of her daughter. She was angry with herself for not being able to protect what she loved so much, the life that was so helplessly intertwined with her own that it _was_ her own. It was stupid to think that she'd be able to stop Rory from ever getting hurt, but at moments like these she allowed herself to think stupid things.

She gazed down at Rory's face, which was finally peaceful as she slept, and remembered little fragments of memories: Rory, five years old, picking up a _Little House on the Prairie _book and trying to stumble her way through the first paragraph, only to have finished the first chapter by the time Lorelai got dinner ready. Rory, in first grade, asking why swans looked so sad even though they were so beautiful. Rory, in middle school, crying when she thought that Lane had told someone else about her secret crush and then forgetting all about it when Lorelai took her on a whirlwind trip to Manhattan for the day.

It was hard to love someone so much. It was hard to have them take up all the space in your heart even though they didn't really need you anymore.

But then again, Lorelai thought, looking at her daughter's peaceful face that was still shiny with tears, maybe Rory still needed her after all.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note:** Sorry about the delay. Lots of crazy stuff lately, so I don't know how long it'll be until I can update again, but this is a pretty lengthy chapter. I hope you like it. As always, thanks for the reviews, especially the specific ones. They help a lot (I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but hey, truth is truth).

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As was his custom on Saturdays, Jess lay in bed until noon and read. His coworkers all thought that he slept until then, but he was usually awake by nine. He picked random passages from random books, some he'd underlined, some he hadn't. A whole stack of novels, biographies, and documentaries sat on the floor within an arm's reach, caging him in so that he had to slip off the foot of his bed just to get up. When he finally did shower and get dressed, he didn't bother to put the books away, knowing he'd just get them out again that night.

The hallway was empty when he left his room. Doors were ajar, but it seemed as if everyone else had beaten him downstairs. Pausing in Leo's room to steal back a copy of _Please Kill Me_ that Jess had loaned him two weeks ago, he stuffed it into his back pocket and went down the steps while putting on the leather jacket he'd had since he was sixteen. It was the first thing he'd bought with his first "reputable" paycheck back in Brooklyn, and he loved it. It'd been with him through it all, through everything that had happened to him since then, and even though it tied him irrevocably to the bad things of his past, he remembered the good things, too.

He needed to take a walk. Maybe he wouldn't come back. This sort of statement might seem completely idiotic in relation to someone else, but not to Jess. Regardless, something had to distract him, even minutely. He needed air and sunshine and noise and confusion; he needed to be drawn out of himself. Some days were better than others, and this felt like one of the not-so-good ones.

He managed to tie on his faded black sneakers by the door and slip outside without alerting a single one of the three other men who were in the next room. It was warm outside, and as he shut the door it didn't even make a click. That done, he jumped down the stairs and onto the sidewalk before randomly choosing a direction (right) and walking.

There was the commotion and movement of typical Philly Saturdays: natives trying to find a not-so-crowded restaurant or park or bar, tourists attempting to hit the sights and trick themselves into thinking they were discovering little "behind-the-scenes" places when, really, all true Philadelphians steered clear of them. It was easy to separate those who lived here from those who were just visiting, almost pathetically easy. That stirred a memory somewhere within Jess, and with great effort he combated it and pushed it away.

He paused at an intersection, waiting for the light to turn, and observed a few of the people near him. There were two small girls, each with a hand tightly grasped by a middle-aged woman and bundled in about fifty too many layers for the weather. He watched the way their knit caps kept sliding down on their foreheads, forcing them to constantly push them up. Sweetly curling hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He shook his head to himself and stared down at the sidewalk. He really wasn't one for kids; they were usually a little bit scared of him, and to be perfectly honest he didn't have a lot of patience with them, either. He had a stepsister – of sorts – in California. She wasn't bad, really. She loved to read, like him, and she didn't make a noise. Eventually, he'd gotten somewhat used to her, but he remembered the day he'd taken off, and he remembered the tears that had been pouring down her face. She was just another reason in his catalogue of many not to get close to people.

It was a good thing the light changed right then, or else he'd probably have started thinking about the situation he really didn't want to think about.

He turned down a narrow, seedy looking sidestreet. Not many people, natives or no, ventured in the part of town he was steadily walking toward. He had stopped being afraid years ago of anything a city could throw at him, especially during midday on a Saturday. He wasn't cocky enough to take out his book while he walked instead of keeping an eye out, but he wanted to.

Eventually, the urge to sit down and read became too much. He found a metal bench by a basketball court and sat on it, briefly pausing to stare at the initials and little statements scratched into the fading black paint, each letter symbolizing a life that had silently faded, too. A little unsettled, he leaned against the back of the bench and felt the sun beating down on him as he took a book out of his jacket that he'd brought with him, _The Invisible Man_. He'd read it at least fifty times, and it definitely wasn't a cheery piece, but he didn't feel particularly cheery anyway. A group of prostitutes walked by him. He knew they were hookers not because of the way they dressed, but because of the way they looked. It went beyond the clothes. They had been bought and sold more times than he could count, hurt, abused, reused. He had _never_ been with a prostitute. No matter how many things he had done, no matter how much meaningless sex he'd had, he refused to pay someone to give it to him.

The words on his page weren't clicking in his head, which he thought was quite inconsiderate of them, considering how desperately he'd wanted to read not two minutes ago. He removed a pen and held it poised, as if just that simple action would make thoughts start flowing and he'd be able to write them down, but the thoughts that did start flowing weren't the kind he'd want to remember later.

He'd been stupid, hoping he could run away from thinking about her. The moment he paused long enough to breathe, her voice came at him in full force, and then it was more than her voice: her hair, her scent, her taste, her touch. Things he hadn't experienced in years were all of the sudden as fresh in his mind as if they'd just happened on this very bench. Not for the first time – God only knew what time it was – he wondered what would have played out if he'd never left. If he'd retaken his senior year, continued to work at the diner, driven up to Yale on weekends. Where would he be? Where would _they_ be?

He was a frigging idiot to even pose those questions is his head. Pointless. Useless. Lifeless. Broken . . . the words used to describe a dead body could just as easily be used to describe him sometimes. What was he _doing_, keeping his life on hold for something he will never be able to get back? When did he become so . . . so . . . weak? And what was worse was that he continued to let her tear at him, pull at him. He had faced men with knives that didn't do as much damage as she did last night with just the damn telephone.

It hadn't always been like this. Or had it? Maybe they'd always be unconsciously struggling against each other, but it had seemed so . . . different back then. He tried to find a better word to describe it, but there wasn't one.

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_There is one bookstore in all of Star's Hollow, only one, and he can't say he is particularly fond of it in comparison to some of the places back in the city, but it's the only place in the entire damn town where he doesn't feel like he has been penned up in Hillbilly Hell. He doesn't like to be seen going into it, for fear that someone might get the bright idea to ask him questions, but so far he's managed to elude prying eyes for the whole five months he's been sentenced here. It's getting to be closer and closer to four in the afternoon, the time for his shift, but him being late is nothing new and surely won't surprise anyone. And besides, he actually went to school for half the day today. He's pretty much all niced out. _

_He cringes as he opens the door to the bookshop, anticipating the jingling bells that hang on the door here just like they do at his uncle's diner. He's found that by opening the door a certain way, the bells can be muted to the point where they hardly make a sound, but it still annoys him nonetheless. As he enters, he notices that the store is absolutely deserted and it must be a slow day in Stars Hollow._

_Immediately, in about ten seconds, he thinks of at least fifteen jokes he can make about that last thought._

_There's even no one behind the counter. The bookkeeper probably went into a back room or something, which is good. Very good. Sometimes the owner gets the mistaken notion in his head that Jess actually _wants _to talk about what he's reading, which is just stupid. He never wants to talk, especially about what he reads. In a life that's intensely personal, his reading material is even more so._

_He shakes his head in disgust at the books that have been stacked on the front display in the window. Each one is some revolting shade of pink or lime or orange, sprinkled with glitter and sporting long legs on their covers or purses on their bindings. They're the sorry excuse for racy romance flicks that middle-aged women went gaga over, some more graphic than others, all sickening him. He's not one for love stories, but the ones he can stomach are the classics, like _The Hunchback of Notre Dame _or _Artemisia._ Interesting that both of those ended unhappily and with death. He wonders if there is a subconscious connection there. Most likely._

_He doesn't even glance at the display again as he passes it and makes his way to a dusty corner in the back, where all the forgotten books have been piled. This is the only place he peruses with any real interest in the whole store. The rest of it seems all a very tiny step up from _Encyclopedia Brown_ level. There is the cookbook section, the self-help section (which he allows himself a few laughs at when he thinks about how this medical experiment of a town is way past that), the children's section, and the magazine section. None of it is his thing. But back here, every once in awhile, he finds something that makes him sit in this corner for an hour or two until he's finished it. It's a false escape; it doesn't make the hard sharpness of reality go away, but at least it makes its edges blur and soften somewhat._

_He's just picking up a promising copy of_ For Whom the Bell Tolls_, which he has read so many times he's memorized the opening chapter, when the bells above the store door jingle loudly as someone not as experienced as he in the art of silence enters. Groaning inwardly, he feels around in his jacket for his CD player and takes it out before clamping his headphones on his ears. He doesn't turn it on. Just its presence is enough to discourage whatever crackpot has just walked in from talking to him. It's a survival tactic, the turned-off CD player. With an ironic grin, he realizes he doesn't even have a CD in it._

_He manages to give an indifferent glance to the front door from around the corner of a bookshelf, and a flash of plaid skirt and navy sweater tells him exactly who just came in. He opens the book to a random page, trying to seem immersed in it, and watches as she pauses by the same display case that turned his stomach on the way in. Apparently it does the same to her, too. In fascination, he silently observes her dragging a cardboard box out from a nearby corner and unloading it on the floor. _

_That done, she straightens up and methodically begins pulling the cheesy romance novels off of the display, carefully laying them into the now empty cardboard box. He can't help but grin when he sees this, regardless of all the thoughts running through his head. Her fingertips, light as feathers, ensure that no book is bent or torn. Once every obscene one of them has been cleared away, she begins to put the books she unloaded originally from the box in their place. A glance tells him that they're some line of adventure series, ones that he probably wouldn't like because of their extreme over-hype and predictably Bruce Willis plot lines. The look on her face tells him she's thinking the exact same thing, but they're the only books she has to work with and they have to be better than the pink ones. With a partially satisfied nod, she shoves the refilled box back into the corner with her foot._

_He doesn't know what to think of her sometimes. Honestly, he doesn't. That's a big confession for him to make. He usually knows what to think of people._

_She turns on her heel to make her way over to the same exact corner where he now stands, and sees him watching her. It's kind of amusing to watch her face metamorphose through about fifty different shades of red in the space of just a few breaths, and he leans against the wall to mercilessly smirk at her. He likes making her uncomfortable. He doesn't know why he enjoys seeing her blush, or why he lets himself talk to her, _only _her, in this entire goddamn town, but there it is._

_"I . . ." She sputters, trying to think of something to say, and he presses his lips together to try to hold back the grin. "I . . . I do that a lot. I mean, not a lot. He won't notice. He never notices. It's just . . . they were so . . . and then I . . ."_

_The amused look on his face obviously rattles her, and he does nothing to break her discomfort. All at once she seems to notice the headphones on his ears. "And you can't hear a word I'm saying," she finishes, with a mixture of disappointment and relief that makes him a little cocky._

_"Yeah, I can," he says, pulling the headphones off his ears and down around his neck. She has a hand planted on her hip and her mouth opens into a little "o" of surprise. He's rendered her speechless, not for the first time since they've met, and he thinks that she should have gotten used to this by now.  
"But . . . you . . ." She looks more than a little confused. He pops open his CD player wordlessly and reveals its bare contents to her. This time a wry grin crosses her face and the blush begins to die down. "Hmm," she comments, raising her eyebrows. "So all those times I've seen you in the diner, whenever Luke wants to talk to you and you're too busy with Coldplay screaming in your ear, you're really not listening to anything?" She crosses her arms and looks almost sexy. He's not very happy that she can make crossed arms in a school uniform and a headband sexy._

_"Huh. Looks like," he admits freely, knowing she won't say anything next time she catches him doing it. He pretends to thumb back for his spot in _For Whom the Bell Tolls.

_"Interesting," she says, coming to stand by him and look for a book of her own. Her shoulder accidentally brushes his, and he feels her tense up at the contact. He wonders if that should bother him. Almost since they've met, a nameless simmering thing has been between them, boiling and dangerous to her, unknown and tempting to him. They walk on eggshells when it comes to physical contact. He knows why and she probably does, too, even if she won't confess it: one touch in the right place would be enough to shatter both their prides and ruin everything. Or maybe fix everything._

_His exterior doesn't show that he's noticed the feeling of her bone against his, and he can almost taste the confusion in her expression. She can't figure out his intentions. One second he's there, everywhere, probing, breaking, introducing her to a world she's never discovered, and the next he has pulled away, he's stoic, untouchable. He's luring her continuously, and he knows she's coming closer and closer. He knows because he's doing the same thing, heels down in the dirt and muscles tense from fighting. She's pulling him in without casting a single line._

_She looks away and browses the shelves for a full minute in silence, and finally straightens up and sees his eyes have been on her the whole time. She blushes again, but he doesn't look away. She clears her throat. "What is this?" She asks in all-too-fake curiosity, her light fingers dancing across his callused ones as she takes the book from him. The physical tensions grow._

_"I thought I saw you reading this just a couple of weeks ago," she says, a kind of cute frown on her face. He debates with one of two answers, the less predictable _My eyes aren't on the book right now _one that would probably knock her over, and the more comfortable sarcasm that would embarrass her instead. He goes with the latter._

_"Jeez, you know when I listen to music, you know what books I read . . . how often do you watch me, anyway?" He doesn't take the book back from her, but instead continues to stare. Once again she doesn't know what to say. He expects her to ramble about something, to run away, to take one of the numerous outs she often takes._

_"Not as often as you watch me," she says, and even with those brazen words there's still a mixture of shyness in them. He almost betrays his calmness and does a double take. This is the first time she's actually confronted whatever there is between them in all its dark glory, and even if it's a small step, it's a step nonetheless. He is suddenly even gladder that Andrew is not at the counter._

_He lets her catch him staring, sometimes. Every once and awhile, when she's alone or with Dean or with Lorelai, it doesn't matter, he glances until she finally looks up. Usually when he watches her, it's in silence, in secret, but because of who he is he has to let her know periodically. She thinks he watches her a lot, and she doesn't even know the half of it._

_He has a second to decide which path he wants this conversation to take. He could make some sort of offbeat remark and let it drop there, or he could keep pushing it into uncharted territory. Fearlessly – well, maybe that isn't entirely true, but close enough – he decides he's waited long enough._

_"Ah," he answers monotonously, but he glances up and impales her with a probing, questioning look. "Well, just so you know, it's not your choice of reading I find so interesting." This, as he feels it, is a moment of blunt truth. Finally. He hadn't realized how very much he needs some, any, sort of signal from the virginal princess until they're standing here, together, alone. He hadn't realized how thirsty he is to touch her, to kiss her, to gently show her that Dean knows nothing about want and need and the delicate place where they both blur together until you can't separate them._

_He says none of this. But he knows she can see it._

_"Me too," she whispers, and she's leaned back against the other wall that comes into the corner. He's so close to her he can count the flecks of silver in her pale blue eyes. He doesn't know what to do. Usually, he would move thoughtlessly, hastily, but with her it's different. He can't bear the thought of screwing this up, although he knows he unavoidably will. _

_"Huh," he mutters, and he steps closer to her, a little afraid, but he sees something in her face that he hasn't seen before, something that almost allows him to do so. He casually sets the book back on the shelf, and thinks about kissing her so hard that the shelf shakes and all the books tumble to the floor. That's what he wants to do, but he doesn't._

_He shouldn't be doing this. He's not good enough. She has everything; he has nothing. He shouldn't drag her down to his level. But how's he supposed to resist when she's looking at him like that, almost begging? When the rest of the town thinks he's trash, but she thinks he has worth? There's no way in hell he can pull away now, and the deadly magnetism continues, defying the careful façade of just friends they've set up over the last few months and openly going where they've subtly been heading all along._

_Closer and closer until he can feel her breath on the skin of his neck. His hands slide down her arms and to her elbows and then to her sides. She squirms and says nothing, her whole body shivering as he continues to touch her. He doesn't go anywhere that would scare her more than she already is, but he might as well be stripping her for how intimate their corner has sudden gotten. Their breaths get ragged, and a small thought flits across his brain: she has wanted this just as much as he has, and maybe for as long. She's just been fooling herself._

_There's a bang toward the front of the room and a slam as some cupboard is shut. His very bone marrow is jarred, all the way to the hairs on the tips of his arms. Footsteps approach and, like a deer caught in the headlights, she glances at him wide-eyed and pleading. Wordlessly, he pushes himself up from where he's pinned her and turns about-face, pretending to be completely engrossed in the nearest book he can find, a collection of Emily Dickinson (Great. He hates Emily Dickinson). He's done all he can to ensure the situation looks normal, but knows the look on her face will give them away._

_"Listen, kid," Andrew says, seeing Jess standing there, and all at once Jess fights the urge to either scream in frustration or dissolve into laughter. He does neither. He doesn't even look up. Rory remains unnoticed. "If you're gonna read it, you're gonna buy it. You can't stand there day after day and read and not buy."_

_He wonders how she is going to get out without the store owner seeing her there. Obviously, she doesn't want anyone to know what just happened in the corner. She's mortified. That makes him a little angry, but he knows it's not in her character to so openly defy the entire town. He's the rebel, she's the goddess, and nothing can ever be done to bridge that gap, or so everyone claims._

_He stares at the book in his hands and understands that words have the power to cross where society can't. Maybe it's only a matter of time until he can kiss her without her coloring with shame and trying to slip away unnoticed. Maybe it's what's bound to happen, and no one can stop it. "Am I scaring away _all_ the customers?" He asks sarcastically, looking pointedly around in the (seemingly) empty shop.  
"Just buy something once in awhile," Andrew growls, and Jess notices a twitch in his jaw. He's not in the least bit intimidating, standing there with an old fisherman's sweater zipped up to his neck, hair styled in that way that suggests he refuses to admit he's anywhere over the age of twenty five. _Look in the mirror, buddy.

_He wants to glance back at her, but he doesn't. His heart is pounding unnaturally hard. The sudden realization hits him: _I almost kissed her. And she was going to let me.

_"Everyone else in this town thinks Hemingway is an ice cream flavor," he says shortly in explanation. There's a beat in which he feels himself being stared down, but he wins. He always wins. Then the bookkeeper is gone again into whatever back room he came from, not even considering that a book might get stolen. Things like that just don't happen here. Anyway, if Jess does decide to steal, having someone standing over him, watching him, won't really do much. He's from Brooklyn, and the rest is self-explanatory._

_But stealing is the last thing he's thinking of. He feels silence descend around him again. His lips are buzzing and his fingers are tingling; his mind is a jumble like it's never been before and he doesn't know what to do. He knows that she will be gone when he turns around. He can feel her leave. She isn't as quiet as he is, as stealthy. No matter how complex she seems in some ways, she's easy to figure out in others, and he's known from the second he turned away from her that she is going to slip away and tomorrow, or maybe even later today, they will meet up again and pretend the last ten minutes didn't happen. It's what must be done to maintain order. Balance._

_He has read hundreds of books that praise the virtues of order and balance. Literature from across the world sings the necessity of harmony, of making sure one side does not outweigh the other. It seems like a tried and true ideal, something that time has upheld. But then again . . . perhaps the reason it _has _upheld is only because people are afraid of fully giving themselves to one thing and abandoning another, of the intensity of being upside down, of how nature favors disorder. He, of all people, knows that nature truly favors disorder. He's a living, breathing example of that; not the best example, perhaps, but an example nonetheless. _

_Without a sound, he sets the Emily Dickinson down on a shelf and walks out of the store, hands deep in his pockets and head bent, staring hard at the sidewalk as if it might talk to him. The bells on the door don't bother him for the first time. He glances around at his fellow passerby, at how he stands out so starkly in a sea of conformists. Out of all the interlocked puzzle pieces that fit together so perfectly in this town, he's the one who's been battered and bruised to the point where he doesn't really match up anywhere. _Yes_, he thinks, as he walks past the diner without even bothering to look inside, _yes_. He will eventually prove that nature favors disorder here. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday in the near future he will prove it. He will prove it because if he doesn't, he will be condemned to striving to maintain the horrible balance he has set up with the girl in the plaid skirt and the sweater, the careful harmony neither of them want. He will introduce her to the slanting, chaotically intense world that she has begun to reach for, maybe without her even knowing it._

_He catches a glimpse of her down the street, staring at the road in the same deep contemplation he's caught in, ignoring her Godzilla-like boyfriend as he tries to get her attention._

You wait, Rory. You wait until I show you that nature favors disorder.

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When Jess finally found his way back to the publishing house at around dusk, even he was partially surprised that he was back. It wasn't that he still held the notion that cramming himself in a car and torching the maps before picking the nearest highway to fly down was always the best option, but he had to admit it sometimes still looked appealing. Something was grounding him now, though, even though he didn't really like Philadelphia that much. He wasn't a troubled boy anymore. Well, actually, he doubted if he had ever really been a boy. Life had come at him too brutally and too harshly for that. Maybe it was the fact that he had distinct memories of being seven and dragging his mother's passed out, drunken body from the hallway and into the apartment where they lived. Maybe it was that by the time he'd entered eighth grade he'd already tried hard drugs and decided they weren't for him. Maybe it was the stab wounds he'd gotten before he received his driver's permit. Whatever the cause, it seemed to him sometimes that he'd never been a kid.

But he didn't like to think about that. It was unfixable.

His stomach was roaring in the distinct way that told him he'd been stupid and forgotten to eat all day. After the surprise appearance of Bailey and subsequent phone call form hell, he hadn't had dinner the night before, either. He didn't have enough money to grab take out. He comforted himself with the idea that that was why he'd returned to Truncheon: food. It was a lie, but he told a lot of those.

Leo looked up from the tiny television with the fuzz-like picture quality that he was perched in front of in the corner. "Elvis has entered the building," he said dryly, turning back to his show that for some reason seemed to involve a cooking pot and a perfume bottle.

Jess made a mental list of all the comments he could make about Leo's hair in relation to Elvis, but he said none of them. That was usually how it worked out. He was smoking a cigarette, carefully blowing long, swirling clouds of smoke up toward the cracking ceiling. _Damn. It still needs to be repainted._

There was a half-empty pot of macaroni and cheese on the stove. It had obviously been made awhile ago; the noodles were sticking together and the powder had clumped up. He looked at it with a distrustful frown and instead raided the fridge, finding nothing truly appealing but settling for a bowl of reheated spaghetti. He was a picky eater, but he'd eat anything if he had to.

As he waited for the rickety, two-decade old microwave (one of the originals, or, as Matthew called it, the Johnny Cash of microwavedom) to beep, he drummed his fingers on the cracked countertop that was stained yellow and reread his notes in the margins of _The Invisible Man_. The brief thought that all the margin notes in all his books, connected, were his version of a kind of autobiography clicked in his brain, but he dismissed it. His writing was so personal sometimes that he'd just scrawl down two or three words after a paragraph that meant the world to him, but no one could understand that meaning. Sometimes even he couldn't.

As he was sitting down at the peeling table with a Tupperware bowl of spaghetti, Leo wandered in from the next room in search of a beer. He, being twenty-one, was the one from whom legal liquor flowed, and sometimes Jess became so annoyed with him that his legality became his highest quality and the main reason he kept a job. Jess would be twenty-one in a couple of months, and most places didn't card around here anyway. Even if they did, there were ways around the law that he was skilled in, but he didn't like to do that anymore. At least not through himself. He used Leo.

_Harsh._

"So . . . where were you today?" Leo asked, pulling a Budweiser can out from the fridge and popping it open.

Jess rolled his eyes and stabbed at his pasta with his fork. "Places," he answered noncommittally, thinking that he had left Connecticut to escape these questions. Well, maybe that wasn't exactly why, but it had proved to be one of the only bonuses in the matter.

Now Leo was genuinely curious. He leaned against the cabinets, and his square glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose. He was the kind of kid Jess would mentally brutalized in middle school. Not that Jess was above it now, by any means. "You're hardly ever here. Where do you go?"

"Huh," he said sarcastically, "I don't know. Where could there ever be to go in a _city_?" All of the sudden he wasn't so hungry anymore. He put his fork down and stood up, walking to the trash can to dump what was left.

"Is there a _lady_?" Leo asked, in the way that was intended to suggest mobster cigars and fishnet stockings and pool tables. Jess methodically scraped spaghetti sauce from the Tupperware, each angry stroke of his arm causing dish soap and bubbles to overflow from the sink.

"Follow me for a day to find out. Seriously, follow me," he said icily, in a tone that was really implying: _You won't survive past the front steps._ He dried off his hands and grabbed his book, stopping to pick up the mail before he tromped up into his bedroom.

Once he shut the door behind him, he rested his forehead on the wall. Leo's question had struck a little deeper than he'd let on. Was there a lady? Not unless a ghost counted as one. He glanced over at a notepad on his desk, in which he had hastily scrawled something this morning that he'd found in _The Snows of Kilimanjaro_. "It was not so much that he lied than there was no truth to tell."

He bowed his head in reverence.

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Rory couldn't have explained exactly why she didn't feel like going into Luke's on Sunday. She'd spent all of Saturday watching movies, not even moving after she crawled to the couch around noon, but today felt different. Newer. Fresher somehow. She had gotten up, showered (gently this time), and dressed, and now she sat in her car parked on the side of the road after saying goodbye to her mother, about to drive back to Yale, wanting coffee before she left but not willing to enter Luke's.

All yesterday she'd cried, for strange and bitter reasons that weren't entirely known to her. Her phone had rung and Logan's number had scrolled across the caller ID the previous morning, but she hadn't picked it up. Mountains hadn't moved and the sky hadn't split open when she quietly stuffed her phone into a drawer to drown out the noise. She wasn't tragically attached to him; he'd messed up before things could go that far, and now she was thinking maybe they'd been a mess up all along. That maybe she'd never been drawn to him, but more to the idea of what he could bring.

It still hurt that he'd done that to her. It still hurt that she'd almost let him. She remembered all of the sweet things he'd said, and with a sinking feeling she realized most of them had been lies, that he'd been what she'd known he was all along: a man who transformed to what he sensed she wanted.

The knock on her car window literally made her scream and the only thing that kept her from jumping straight up and slamming her head on the roof was her seatbelt. When she turned and saw Kirk's face pressed against the glass, another half whimper escaped from her throat. It was strange how it always took some time to get re-used to Kirk.

She motioned to him to back up, but he didn't seem to get the gesture. She didn't want slobber marks on her window. And the wonders of Stars Hollow never ceased. Gently, and a little bit timidly, she opened the door. He backed up and she squeezed out through the small space he left her before shutting it behind her.

"You have a distinctly collegian car," he said a little bit pompously, and Rory knew that it would take a moment for him to remember what he wanted her for in the first place. She thought it strange that he hadn't changed in the nearly thirteen years she'd known him. He had the same haircut, the same golf shirts, the same patent leather shoes. Ah, well, it was good to be able to count on some things.

"I particularly like the gas mileage efficiency that's reflected in the muffler. My girlfriend had a car like that, once. Back before she was my girlfriend, but now she _is_ my girlfriend." She had to work to hide the smile on her face. Lulu had been dating Kirk for over two years, God knew why, but it seemed like even after all this time Kirk thought people still didn't believe she existed.

"Yes, it is a lovely muffler . . ." she agreed, her face suddenly serious. The moment she let herself forget about everything, about the situation she was in, it would all suddenly weigh on her again with the force of a brick. She wondered if that was how she would be condemned to deal with all crises in her life, this half dead feeling where she never knew if she was laughing or crying.

"Oh, right. Rory, Lane is looking for you." The way he said it made her think of Morse code and telegrams on ships, or maybe of _Red Storm Rising_. It would have amused her if she wasn't fighting a bout of coldness and brokenness at the moment. It would be over in just a few seconds. She knew herself.

"Where is she?" She asked, and even as she did so some of the tightness in her chest eased a little bit. It was like a contraction; the wave had passed. She didn't know when the next one would hit her. The spring wind was soft and tender on her skin, and for a moment she considered hopping in her car and driving as far away as she possibly could and not back to Yale at all. She wasn't sure if she could face Yale.

But she would never be able to just leave. She was too much of a coward.

With that thought, his face stirred in her head again, and it was strange to find him because it made her realize he'd been there for the last twenty-four hours, on a back burner, even if she'd been focusing on someone else the whole time. Or maybe she'd been thinking of him without pausing to register it. Maybe that's how it had played out for two whole years.

"Oh, I don't know. I was making a tower out of Sweet n Low packets when she told me and not paying too much attention," he commented off-handedly, with a characteristically gangly shrug. Rory let a ghost of a smile touch her lips.

"Could she possibly be in Luke's?"

He contemplated for a moment. "Possibly."

"Thanks, Kirk," she told him, pausing to wait for the humble nod that always came after he'd done something for someone else. There it was. She turned on her heel and crossed the street, and again the peculiar feeling of not wanting to enter that blue door began to make her fingers tingle, but she shook her head. She was being stupid.

Stubbornly, she entered the diner with her mouth set in a straight line and her eyes determined. She always got this feeling every once and awhile, the dread of going inside, but it had been so infrequently that she'd been able to ignore it. Now it was stronger than it had been in a long time.

An unconscious relief flowed through her body when she rediscovered how everything still looked the same, and she wondered what she had expected: evil clowns with machetes, perhaps? This place hadn't changed anything but the special board in a decade. She had nothing to fear, so why did she get that lump in her throat? Was it because . . . could it possibly be because she was afraid of the familiarity? _Or afraid of the memories?_

Luke was counting change out for Taylor, and she smiled when she saw how he was making a point to do it in the smallest form possible, starting with the pennies and working his way up. They were just cracking into the quarters when she closed the door behind her with a resounding jangle and searched the room for Lane, who was no where in sight.

Luke looked up. "Oh, thank God," he muttered. She tried to remember when he'd ever been quite that outspokenly happy to see her, and nothing came to mind. She looked at him curiously. "In the back. She's in the storeroom." With a jerk of his head he pointed her in the right direction, which she found a little odd since it wasn't like she hadn't been there dozens of times; this was Luke's, after all. Her cheeks colored a moment later when she recalled that she hadn't gone into the storeroom because Luke had asked her too, and she blushed even more at exactly what she had done there.

But there was no time to fall back into reminiscing at the moment (although, when was there ever?). She quietly lifted the curtain and slipped behind it, brushing strands of hair out of her face and behind her ears. A light streamed from the storeroom into the darkness of the hallway, and she pushed open the door to find Lane sitting in a sort of castle of olive jars and hamburger buns.

". . . Lane?" Her voice was tentative, watching as her best friend angrily slammed jar after jar of olives out of a cardboard box and down onto the floor. The shelves were all full. Something was not right, as was evidenced by the mountain of straw cartons in the corner that had been piled like the leaning tower of Pisa.

Lane looked up. Her hair was pulled sharply back in a messy ponytail and her Def Leopard T-shirt had slipped partially down her shoulder. She didn't look sad, or even too mad, just very hyper, like she always did when confronted with something unpleasant. "Rory! There you are! I've been trying to call you all morning. Get me those bagels over there, would you?"

Without protesting, Rory gently picked up the nearest bag of bagels and handed them over. Lane shoved them next to a box of lemon juice. "What's going on?" Rory asked carefully, thinking that it was probably a fire hazard to have everything crammed together like this.

"What? What do you mean? Can you get the salt shakers?"

She obliged, but continued to carefully probe. "Is everything okay?" Discreetly, she moved and tried to block Lane's view of the pepper, having a bad mental image of what would happen if pepper was let loose.

Lane's hands suddenly went limp and she dropped a salt shaker. Rory distantly wondered how long Lane had been waiting for her, and guiltily thought it'd been awhile. A stack of jelly tilted precariously in their direction. "I don't know," Lane answered quietly.

"What's wrong?" Rory asked, sitting down on one of the few boxes that were still full (this one with flour). She hated being in here. She hated being so close to where she had been so afraid, so deliriously afraid, but not happy, too. She hated how she could still see the flecks of gold in his intense eyes and feel his hair tangled in her fingers and his warm breath on her skin. It was awful that she couldn't focus on what was making her friend's face shadow over and cloud because she was being haunted by something that was far past over.

"It's . . . Zach. We had a fight, and he's threatening to leave the band." That was the last thing Rory had expected, given how Lane's love life had seemed to constantly triumph over her own recently, despite how at first appearance Zach had very few more brain cells than a squished beet. She looked at Lane with sympathetic eyes, waiting for the rest of the story. "He . . . I thought he was seeing someone else," she whispered, her gaze on the concrete floor.

Rory pulled Lane down next to her. They didn't sob into each other's shoulders or use each other as tissues. With a few exceptions, they'd never been much like that. Instead, they simply sat hip to hip, and Rory tried to comfort Lane with an accepting silence. It worked a lot better than it sounded like it did.

"He wasn't," Lane went on, salt shakers completely abandoned, "But he was really mad that I didn't trust him. _Really_ mad." She took a deep breath, and then, voice breaking, said, "I just . . . I just . . . I don't want to lose him, you know?"

"I know," Rory said. She swallowed and looked into Lane's trembling face, remembering when they were kids and their biggest problems had been what shirt to wear to a pep rally. That all seemed so far away. "It'll be fine. You just have to wait out the bad stuff to get to the good stuff. It's worth it in the end."

Something hard and cold sat in her stomach when she said that. But she wasn't focusing on herself right now.

"Yeah," Lane agreed, wiping her eyes on the hem of her T-shirt and giving a shaky smile. "You're right." Her expression darkened again. "I just . . . I . . . we live in the same apartment, together, and right now it's so weird . . ."

Rory understood her unspoken question and gently put her hand on Lane's elbow. "Come to Yale with me," she suggested, feeling a mayonnaise jar digging in her back. She knew that her friend needed to get away, if only for a few days. That was exactly how she'd felt so many times before. Yes, Lane needed an escape hatch, and Rory was more than happy to provide one, because she remembered how it felt without a way out. It had been horrible. She refused to let that claustrophobic feeling wash over Lane like it had her.

Besides, the idea of returning alone to Yale alone, after what had happened last Friday, was a very grim prospect indeed. She hadn't even paused to think how she was going to deal with seeing Logan in her classes or on the newspaper. And she hadn't worked up the nerve yet to call him and tell him that she was done, they were through, and it was over. But he had to know that already. He had to.

The sinking feeling was fighting to overwhelm her throat again. She fought it back.

Lane looked up with a gleam of relief in her eyes, but it was quickly dulled. "I don't want to . . . to cause trouble . . ." she trailed off, turning to study the floor with heavy interest. "Like last time, I got in everyone's way."

Rory shook her head. Friends were never in the way, and even when they were, it didn't matter. She smiled. "You weren't in the way. That was just Paris being . . . well, Paris." It felt strange to smile when her insides were so disconnected. Not bad, really, but just strange. Lane still looked uncertain. "Just come for a couple of days. Take a break. Your band couldn't practice anyway with this thing between you and Zach."

"I don't know if I can handle Yale," she said, and Rory remembered how intimidated she had been by the ivy-covered walls and stone buildings and mountains of books. She put her arm around Lane's waist.

"I don't know if Yale can handle _you_." She took a brief look at the sparkles on Lane's eyelids, the way her fingers were blistered from drumming, and her mascara. "But it's worth a shot. C'mon. You know Luke can't handle the emotionally-distressed Lane."

"He can't even handle the normal Lane."

"All the more reason to come with me," Rory said cheerfully, and by the way Lane smiled at her she knew it was settled. "Alright, pick up your bag and let's go." She stood up and dusted her jeans off before feeling blindly for the doorknob around a stack of pancake mix.

"What do you mean, 'pick up your bag?'"

Rory turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow. "You knew I was in town and you knew I'd say yes. Don't play coy with me," she chastised. "You're packed already and your bag is here somewhere." Finally finding the knob, she pushed open the door and flicked the storeroom light off. _Just wait until Luke sees the typhoon that went through in here._

Lane said nothing and sheepishly slipped by her out the door, stooping around the corner to pick up a black backpack covered with rhinestones. Rory gave her one I-told-you-so look, and then turned and walked out through the curtain to be confronted immediately with a somewhat puzzled Luke.

"Make sure you bring excavating material into the storeroom," she murmured lowly, taking the liberty of finding herself her own cup for coffee.

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The traffic was light since it was Sunday, and although the sky was overcast it seemed loathe to rain. Rory felt the way her car hummed through her slip on shoes and against her feet, making her toes buzz. The radio was off, which wasn't an all-too-often occurrence for her. Another exit sign whizzed by. There were only two more before she'd have to get off the interstate to get to Yale.

"Why did you come this weekend?"

She turned to look at Lane in surprise, not expecting the question. Since when did she need a reason to come home? But slowly, numbly, she realized that Lane had seen something was wrong. Was it the silence in the car? Were her eyes still red from crying? Maybe she carried her sadness with her, like a cloak that was tied around her neck, choking her.

Or maybe Lane just always knew when she was hurt.

She ran a hand through her hair and kept her eyes glued on the road, afraid that the tears would come if she didn't focus on _something_. The lines began to blur on the edges and she blinked. "You know when . . . you know how . . ." She sighed in irritation and tried again. "Logan and I had . . . we . . . we aren't together anymore."

It felt strange saying it like that, which gave her something of an epiphany: she'd never really felt like they were together in the first place. She'd never gotten to know him, never felt any intensity, never suffered from that delicious feeling of delirium that accompanied a powerful relationship. There was the nervousness, yes, and physical attraction, but no fireworks or seasickness or stomach clenching. She'd wanted to get away from all that, and she had gotten her wish. Suddenly, she felt very hollow.

"Oh, Rory . . . I'm sorry," Lane whispered, her compassion never faltering for a second. Rory knew she had never liked Logan, but she also knew her sympathy was genuine. She admired her for that.

There were a million things she could have said, a million different feelings she could have talked through that resulted from another failed relationship. She might've mentioned her fear of walking around campus and seeing Logan again, of the emptiness when she went back to her dorm after classes without a sweet note waiting for her tucked in the door, of disappointing her grandparents, of being alone one more time. There was how he'd made her laugh, how he'd introduced her to his friends, how hard it was going to be to sit in the same room as him every day and not talk to him freely like they used to. She knew that things couldn't be like they were before; she'd learned that with Dean

But out of all of these perfectly normal and human things she could have said, the words that finally came from her mouth made no sense to her at all. "I called Jess."

_No, no, no. Don't go there. Not like this, not today, not tomorrow. Don't go there._

"You . . . called Jess?" While Lane was digesting it, so was Rory. She hadn't allowed herself to really think about it since it'd happened. Why did she call _Jess_? Of all people? Had he _ever_ been mistaken for sympathetic or a good conversationalist? And what could _possibly_ incite her to contact the very person her boyfriend had basically said she'd . . . done _it_ with?

That was the analytical side of the situation, plain and simple: it had been stupid. The emotional side, however, was much more complex.

She tried to go through it piece by piece and section by section, because that was just how she worked, but it didn't help. All of the feelings that had welled up inside of her that night were with her in the car again, rushing by her fast and fevered and cold, like wind being thrown off a train. She attempted to grasp one thought and then it was gone, slipping through her fingers. They had the consistency of Jell-O; she knew they were there, but she couldn't quite get her hands around them. It scared her in a way she hadn't been scared for a long time, making her fingers dance on the wheel and her eyes flit from one side of the road to the other in a vain struggle with distraction.

"Jess?" Lane asked, and it seemed to Rory that it was all she could get out, but that one word really meant a loaded sentence. _Why would you go to comfort for someone who made you cry, who hurt you, who broke you?_ She exhaled shakily.

"I don't know," she said nervously, checking her rearview mirror out of habit. Something was building up inside of her, pushing against her lungs, and she wanted to scream. "I have no idea what I was thinking."

"But _Jess_, Rory," Lane emphasized. This time it was pointed.

"I don't know, okay? He . . . he . . . it just seemed right at the moment, that's all."

There was a silence in which Rory felt that Lane had realized something she hadn't. She tried desperately to think of what that might be, but nothing came to mind. A crazy thought entered her brain: maybe if she explained it better, she could also see this elusive revelation.

"He . . . he's . . . he's been there, he's been in way deeper, and I knew he wouldn't judge me. And . . ." She took a deep breath, trying to phrase it, but knowing it was going to come out stupid no matter how she said it. "I can't . . . he's all angles and mysteries . . . all shadow . . . I . . . he's there one moment and he's gone the next, and I always wish that I'd told him things . . . all kinds of things . . . I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid to not tell him stuff now. Or . . . I was . . ."

Where only days ago she was determined to never see him again, she now found herself thinking that she _couldn't_ see him again, that they were destined to hurt each other whenever they were near each other, that they tore at each other until they bled and then cleaned the wounds with their own tears. Or with her own tears. She'd never seen him cry.

Even after she attempted to justify her action, she was even more confused. Everything was a jumble in her mind, cigarette smoke and books and leather and hair gel and aftershave, polo shirts and khakis and parachutes and computers and tears. It was all so mixed that she was actually getting a headache, but it was nothing compared to her heartache.

Lane still sat there with that look that said she had found something precious, something so terribly obvious that it made it almost invisible. She didn't say anything to explain it to Rory. Instead, she murmured, "Oh . . . it's okay to talk to him, you know . . ."

Rory shook her head, the uncertainty heavier than ever. Her chest felt compressed. "No, not anymore. Not with what always happens."

She pulled off the interstate and onto an exit ramp.

_"Now he found out a new thing -- namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing."  
_


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note:** Thanks for the reviews, everyone. They're spectacular. Okay, next chapter is where the Jess/Rory interaction starts up again, so deal with just . . . one . . . more . . . :)

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It was only five in the morning, but Jess had been tossing and turning for an hour with absolutely no results of sleep anywhere in his vicinity. It was Monday, which meant he had to be down in the office by seven-thirty. That gave him a good two hours before he had to get up and shower. He watched the minutes tick away as he tried to drown his brain and make it stop thinking, but it was pointless. He always had nights like this every once in awhile where he just couldn't sleep.

Finally, he decided that he wasn't going to be an idiot and just lay there helplessly. There was far too much running through his mind for him to allow that. Disturbingly, a lot of them were childhood memories, and the ones he'd managed to block out always came to him at times like this, in that half state between awake and asleep. He despised remembering some of the things that had happened to him when he was younger, not just because of how horrible they were, but because of how weak they made him feel.

He freed himself from the entrapment of his sheets that were tangled around his lean body. He'd always thrashed when he slept, and never achieved what one would call "deep" sleep. His senses were constantly hypersensitive, on alert, ready to be kicked into overdrive. He heard every sound, and living in a city, this had been a problem for him both as a kid and now. Slowly, he sat up and rubbed a hand across his face before stumbling over to his desk and sitting down with a folder of background information on local book suppliers. The stained lamp on his desk emitted a faint, yellow glow. He and his co-workers had been tossing around the idea of selling a few books for awhile now; nothing major, just a wall of the good, gritty classic and contemporaries.

The floor was cold under his feet. For fifteen minutes, he flipped through the folders, scanning prices and quality grades. What he saw somewhat depressed him. It wasn't exactly that he was afraid of spending money, but they really didn't have any to spend. At least not yet. He'd lived off of less than he currently had, though, that couldn't be argued.

Eventually, the folder was pushed to the wayside and _Notes From Underground_ made its way out onto his desk instead. His throat burned and he realized how thirsty he was. Last night, he'd fallen asleep after drinking a can of beer, which wasn't precisely hydrating. That's not what he drank it for, though. He remembered something he'd read somewhere. _It came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort. _

With the gracefulness of a cat, he stood up and slipped out the door. He made absolutely no sound. That kind of creeped him out, honestly. It was completely instinct, almost like it'd been inserted into his DNA. He knew that wasn't true. Neither or his parents were like that. He didn't linger on thoughts of his parents for very long; they disappointed him, as he was sure he'd disappointed them. It was a balance, really, and again he remembered how much he hated balance. He protected his mother because for years she'd had no one else to do it for her, no friends and no man. Her abusive boyfriends came and went, although they'd started to go a lot faster when he was thirteen and had learned to punch back.

The sky was still dark. It was probably quarter to six now. He heard people out on the streets, the very tail end of the night crowd stumbling drunkenly home before sunrise. Hopefully, no one would pass out on their doorstep. If someone did, he'd just drag them off and onto the sidewalk like usual.

A painting startled him when he turned from the bottom of the stairs and toward the kitchen. Apparently, another local artist had donated a piece for them to sell and reap the profits of. It was a confusing mix of lines, but it was almost like you could make the picture become whatever you wanted it to be. When he focused hard enough, he saw a dark ocean with sea grass and bluffs, but when he concentrated on something else, it became tall, full trees and a lake.

Or maybe that was just him reminiscing again.

Shaking his head, he headed toward the quiet kitchen and stepped carefully over the peeling edge of the linoleum. That needed to be nailed down. He'd get around to fixing all this one day, he _would_. His sweatpants dragged under his heels and he unstuck his T-shirt from his back where it had been plastered with the sweat that nightmares he couldn't remember had provoked. Blindly, he reached out for the handle of the fridge and found it. After a good deal of yanking it pulled open.

He got the distinct impression he was being watched, the unmistakable sensation of a pair of eyes following him. A noise in the corner of a chair being shifted made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. A million different scenarios started running through his head, one of the more plausible ones involving robbery. But that was just stupid. They didn't even have a real microwave. Who in the hell would rob them?

Then again, this was Philadelphia. An IQ of anything above subconscious was considered overachieving.

Deliberately, his hand tightened on a glass beer bottle in the fridge and he turned to the wall, scanning the darkness for a shape. The yellow light of the refrigerator reflected garishly on two people that were on the floor. His hand relaxed when he saw them. Fighting the urge to laugh out loud, he realized he had found Matthew only in his boxers, sprawled uncomfortably by the table, staring at Jess like someone who was stretched out on a guillotine. He momentarily thought that at least Matthew was in the right position for such a contraption, although even good old Louie XVI had possessed the common decency to wear some clothes. A girl in nothing but a guy's T-shirt – Jess would have guessed Matthew's, to be more precise – was trapped half beneath him.

He thought of many ways to mock this five A.M. tryst, but had more dignity than to taunt an almost naked man. That would come in a couple of hours. He grabbed a bottle of water from way back in the fridge, silently applauding the man whom had suffered a chick enough moment to buy bottled water.

Quite suddenly, the girl's face seemed strangely familiar to him. He tilted his head to get another look, and sure enough, Bailey was currently glued underneath Matthew on his kitchen floor. Unbelievable. _You guys did go out to dinner first, right? I hope you at least made him cook you an Easy-Mac._

The heaviness in the air was palpable. No one shifted, moved, or even breathed for several long seconds.

"Huh," was all he said in the end, giving a little shrug and noticing that Bailey had orange on the bottom of her feet. That meant she used that tanning spray crap. Hell, she probably didn't have a single original body part left. She was a walking fire hazard, a poster girl for the miracle of prosthetics.

_I mean, I've heard of manuscripts getting passed around a publishing house, but come on . . ._

Grinning openly now, he turned around and soundlessly climbed up the steps, praying they'd somehow find the dignity to be gone by the time he went back down for his Fruit-Loops. Maybe they'd even be kind enough to smooth out some of the lumps in the floor.

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Rory sat at her laptop typing a few more paragraphs of her Proust essay, painfully aware of how the due date was creeping up on her. She usually liked to be ahead in assignments – she liked to be ahead in everything – but her unexpected weekend away from anything of academic substance had pushed her back until she was barely on time. Luckily, she was in her working mood at the moment and not easily distracted. Lane had gone out to get coffee. She'd most likely end up leaving campus to check out some record store or another, which gave Rory more uninterrupted time. Her roommates were all out, and she didn't have another class until one in the afternoon.

She was just getting into her typing groove, which involved a few weird body motions and facial expressions, when her phone jangled a sort of beach theme on the corner of her desk. That meant it was her mother. Begrudgingly, she picked up the phone, never even considering not answering it, but not altogether unhappy with the disruption. "Hello?"

"Someone sounds grumpy," Lorelai commented. Rory heard some rustling in the background and wondered what was going on. This and ideas of Proust were combating for the space in her brain, giving her a kind of dull headache. She ran a hand through her bangs, well aware that it would make her look like she had a fro to anyone who happened to walk in, and ran a finger idly across the cover of a textbook.

"I'm _working_. Remember? Yale? Work?"

"So _that's_ what they take all your money for. To beat all original creativity out of you and fry your brain cells."

"Exactly."

"As long as we're on the same page."

There was a bang on the other end of the line. "Mom, what's going _on_?" In her mind, she construed dozens of different accounts that involved Lorelai and various small animals, none of which were pleasant. She remembered one time when she was eleven and a chipmunk had made its way into the house, resulting in overturned furniture, a broken dishwasher, and a TV that stopped showing pictures in color.

"Well . . . umm . . ." A zipping noise. "Do you remember . . . dammit, my nail! . . . do you remember that conference for inn design that Michel called about?"

Okay. Good. No small animals.

After a moment of thinking and shoving Proust out of her head, Rory vaguely remembered the phone call that had come on Saturday evening, involving Michel getting Lorelai, Sookie, and himself on the list for some high class designer meeting all the way in Paris. "You mean the one you laughed at and made eight different Richard Simmons references to?"

"That's the one. I really wish I knew how to close suitcases . . ."

She took a moment to process the information, and then almost had a seizure with disbelief. "You aren't _going_, are you?"

There was an awkward pause. "Michel eventually talked me into it. I guess someone canceled, and we barely made the cut off. It's a really rare opportunity –"

"But you design you own stuff. You _hate_ formal designers."

"Uh, I don't think I ever said that."

"Yes you did. You said – and I quote – 'I could design something to go right up their ass.'"

"Rory!"

"That's what you _said_." She dropped a pencil she'd been holding and pressed her hand to her forehead. Their entire plan had been to go to Europe once, _once_, after her high school graduation and not ever go back again. And a _conference._ That sounded so . . . so . . . ritzy. They weren't ritzy people. For crying out loud, they'd slept in refugee camps and in soup kitchens when they backpacked that summer, including one very messy experience with a Swedish man in a monk cell.

"Mom –"

"Listen, Rory, I'm going," her mother said, in a way that sounded much more irritated than normal, almost angry. "My flight leaves tomorrow morning out of Hartford. They key will be in the same place, and the sink in the upstairs bathroom isn't working right so if you stay over while I'm gone make sure you don't use it. I'll be back in a week and I'll call you when I get there."

_Wow_. She felt like she'd just been hit simultaneously by several large missiles. She was confused by the hard tone in Lorelai's voice, the bitter lining in her words that was so strange and unfamiliar. What had she done? Had she said something, or left something, or insinuated something?

"What's your problem?" She asked. Her chest ached; she wondered how many more emotional blows she could withstand before she completely broke.

"I . . . I don't . . . Nothing. I'm tired. I should go."

She hated to leave things like this, unresolved, but that seemed to be the trend as of late. She could think of nothing more to say. Emptily, like she had gaping hole in her ribcage, she laid her head down on her stretched out arm and stared at the Eleanor Roosevelt poster on the wall, not feeling anything. "Okay. I guess I'll talk to you on Wednesday."

"Love you." For some reason, that made her hurt more.

"Love you too. Bye." She flipped her phone shut and tried to understand what she'd just been told. Her mother was going to Paris because . . . Michel had convinced her to?

And all of the sudden she knew. She knew because she was the exact same way herself. Something had happened since she'd left yesterday and her mother was trying to pretend it hadn't. She was running.

_Don't run, don't do it. It doesn't help. Pretending doesn't make things go away. They'll still be waiting for you when you come back._

Her whole life had been scarred by fleeing, either her own or someone else's, muddied by footprints carelessly trampled across her heart and through her insides, causing her to eventually loathe the idea of running. In an attempt to save yourself and escape, you ended up getting broken.

Her essay seemed very pointless now. She stared at the glowing laptop screen, not really seeing it at all.

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_The first thunderstorm of the year comes quite suddenly, without any forewarning, and it lights up the nighttime May sky with ribbons of rain and blinding flashes of brilliance. The wind batters against her house and the water pounds on her roof with such a tempestuous pulse that it keeps her awake. She isn't about to sleep anyway. Two in the morning has just passed and she has school tomorrow, but she doesn't mind. It has become a well-cherished habit for her to revel in the season's first storm, almost like her mother's love of the first snow. Her soul feels strangely detached from her body, as if in this eerie pitch black hour it wants to become part of the passionate display outside. Electricity crackles in the air and she feels the boom in her very lungs, traveling across her skin and into her veins. _

_When another lightning fork rips through the horizon, she watches it through the crack in her curtains. More thunder echoes in the night. She props herself up on her pillow and admires the way the rain slides like silk down her windowpane._

_All of the sudden, he's standing there out on her porch, staring at her through the glass like it's the most natural thing in the world for him to meet her in the middle of a storm two hours past midnight. She immediately jumps up to let him in. For them, it _is_ almost natural, because this how their relationship works: completely unpredictable, restless, unsettling. They're invisibly bound to some kind of forceful impulsiveness that makes her not hesitate before pulling her window open._

_The sound of rain hammering into the gravel drowns out her voice when she asks him what he's doing here, but he knows what she's saying anyway. "I was taking a walk," he mutters, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, standing four feet away. She doesn't ask what he was doing walking around at two in the morning, because it just fits him. He doesn't invite himself in. He doesn't move at all. He simply stands there, staring in a way that makes her feel like her skin's been pulled back. She gets tingles in her spine._

_She gives him permission to come inside by beckoning him with her hand, and he waits a beat before climbing over the windowsill. He seems almost unreal when he finally stands in her room, and she reaches out a hand to finger the rough structure of his dripping dark hair that's plastered to his head. His olive hoodie is soaked through. The black T-shirt that he wears underneath it is drenched. Even his sneakers look saturated. He's been outside for awhile._

_"Why didn't you just go back to Luke's?" She asks, entwining her warm hands with his cold ones. She looks at the way her fingers fit so perfectly into the spaces between his, how they almost click together like puzzle pieces._

_In response, he shrugs and she smiles. He doesn't have to say anything for her to know the answer: he wants to be with her. She leans in to hug him and feels water seeping from him into her. The torn bottoms of his jean are muddy. He continues to drip on her floor and she doesn't care._

_"I don't want to get you wet," he mumbles. She realizes that he's being protective of her, which isn't something he does very often. It makes her bury her face into his soaking sweatshirt. _

_"I _want_ to get wet," she whispers, taking in the heady, breathtaking scent of his own smell mixed with that of the rain, raindrops mixed with ash and aftershave. It makes her almost dizzy._

_He makes a half-hearted attempt to slip out of her grasp, but when he can't he simply pulls his arms around her and holds her there. She never thought heaven would be this dark, but that's what he is. He's dark and he's her addiction. The girl who doesn't even glance at alcohol or drugs can't stay away from this, this angled, chaotic mess of feelings and touches she can't say no to._

_She sits down on her bed and brings him with her, not caring that he's going to get her mattress wet. It doesn't matter. "Read to me?" She asks, blindly grabbing a book that lies on her nightstand and holding it out to him. She loves to hear his voice, the low, husky quality that cigarettes have given it, the delicateness with which he pronounces the words and the way he never stumbles. _

_"Your mom's already looking for a chance to put me on the rack," he argues. Ignoring him for the moment, she lets her fingers find the hem of his sweatshirt and she begins to pull it off of him. He looks at her curiously, almost like he's afraid, as another thunderclap makes the house shake. She's never seen that look on him before. She works the heavy, soaked material off of him and pulls it over his head. He stares at her as if she's glass._

_"You can't keep that on. You'll get sick." She drops the sweatshirt on the ground and moves toward his T-shirt, but his hands intercept her own and stop her. Their gazes meet, flashing like lightning. She wonders what's gotten into her, and what's gotten into him to stop whatever's gotten into her. She doesn't want to talk about it. She pulls away like she's been burned. "My mom's asleep."_

_He doesn't nod. He continues to keep staring at her. She shivers and leans back into the pillow, and eventually he follows her and takes the book she's been reading from her. He opens it to the page she's bookmarked and starts with the first paragraph._

_"'You said I killed you - haunt me, then. The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe," he murmurs, the rain becoming background music to the harmonious lull of his voice. Although she has just pulled away from him, she's drawn as if by a magnet to his body. Her arm creeps around his waist and her head comes to lie on his chest as he somehow manages to make out the letters on the page even in the deep darkness. "'I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad, only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!'"_

_The words he reads by chance chill her to her bone marrow. He pauses, and she thinks maybe they've affected him, too. She closes her eyes for a half a second and wonders if that would be her response if he left, if he were gone. Would she want him to take the form of a ghost, to take any form, just so that he would be near her? And when looks up at him again, she knows her answer. She's captivated, trapped, completely enraptured by whatever sharp and bitter thing he has in him that draws her closer, because it's intertwined hopelessly with something good and beautiful and amazing that she's never seen before. She'll probably never see it again._

_"_Wuthering Heights_," he comments softly, turning over the book to look at the spine and finding he is correct in his guess. He places the book on his stomach for a moment and she watches him look up at the ceiling, admiring his strong profile and his chiseled cheekbones. He looks like he's been hewn from stone. His arm cradles her head and she presses her leg against his dripping jeans. The soft cotton of her pajamas soaks up the rainwater on him as rain continues to batter against the house and beat into the ground, sounding like breaking wine glasses. _

_She has a sudden overwhelming desire to taste the storm on his mouth. He looks down at her just as she lifts herself up so that she can reach him, and she leans half over him to find his lips. It starts off sweet and tender, and she can feel the rain and the lightning and the thunder like it were in the room with her. She thinks maybe their whole relationship is made of rain and lightning and thunder. She leans into him and his hands come around on her back, spreading broad and solid across the delicate arch of her spine. Like it usually does, the gentle kiss begins to transform into something hard and heavy and unintentional, something destined to be pursued, something maybe even doomed because neither of them know how to stop. He pulls her until she lies completely on top of him, melting with his soaked clothing, tasting the wet leaves outside and the sharp taste of his mouth._

_Urgently, her hands flutter over his T-shirt, not quite sure what to do but needing to do something, and settling for finally grasping at his sinewy arms and then threading through his damp black hair, tightening into fists and pulling at the strands at the base of his neck. He begins to rub her stomach and her sides and her collarbone, and she begins to float off into that place that's neither dream nor reality, but a haven that's only found every once in awhile at the strangest of times. She breathes in deeply and he takes that moment to demand entrance into her mouth with his tongue, which she willingly gives. He probes and controls and she can't do much but hold on, because he's absolutely blowing her away._

_When her fingertips touch the band of skin on the top of his jeans, he groans and moves his mouth away from hers. She doesn't understand exactly why he falls back into the pillows and swallows, but she suddenly wonders if she's done something wrong. She always seems to do something wrong that makes him pull away like this. She's inexperienced and it shames her because she knows he isn't. The darkness hides her blush as she tries to say something but can't and begins to slide off of him._

_His hand snakes out and wraps around her wrist while the other holds her waist, keeping her exactly where she is. When he looks at her, she realizes that the storm blowing outside is nothing compared to the intensity of the storm raging in his eyes. She wants so desperately for him to let her in, but he keeps her out even as he pulls her closer. He doesn't say anything, just breathes into her hair for a second. It's the softest he knows how to be, which is enough for her._

_It's still thundering, but he kisses the top of her head and then slides off her bed and picks his sweatshirt up off the floor. "I'm going to go," he says, pulling the heavy olive fabric over his head and fixing the hood so it's not inside out. She watches him silently. Half of her wants to ask why, but she doesn't because she thinks she already knows. He turns to look back at her once, raising his eyebrows with a smirk that makes her cheeks flame. She looks down at the ground for a moment and then back up at him as he opens the window. Rain sprays in and peppers the papers on her desk, but she doesn't care. He silently shuts it behind him before he is gone, disappearing back into the night that is him, vanishing like mist when the sunlight burns it off. She lays on her comforter, feeling the dampness beside her and seeing the puddles on her floor, the only reminders that he was ever here at all. A bolt of lightning throws her room into all kinds of shadows. She closes her burning eyes and smells his scent in the pillow, trying to imagine what it would have been like if he'd stayed and thankful that he hadn't all at the same time. In her innocence, she has never known that you could want one person so horribly, and she wonders what she was doing for all those months before she let him hold onto her. _

_The rain continues to fall._

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Rory had never been forced to break up with a boyfriend before. She didn't know what to say. Half of her wanted to shove Logan out of her apartment and just write him an email, but that would be far too cowardly and take far too long, and she needed to get this over with now. He stood there in the living room of her dorm, staring at her with pleading eyes and a face that was, for once, completely devoid of any and all mocking emotions.

It was hard for her, because the last lingering wisps of adoration were still in her heart and she had difficult time dismissing them, but it was what needed to be done. She was realizing more and more that she'd placed him on a pedestal throughout their entire relationship, a position he'd only too happily accepted. He'd never been real to her, never been close enough to touch, never left an impression on her skin or a tingling in her lips. When he had finally become tangible, he wasn't the kind of man she'd thought he was. He wasn't what she was looking for or what she wanted; he didn't make her hunger for more and yet feel strangely complete at the same time. She'd almost recklessly given herself away to someone who didn't even truly want her, either. The thought made her eyes sting. She closed them briefly.

"Ace," he said, and he sounded so sincere the she tore her gaze from the floor up to his face. His blue, blue eyes seemed distant somehow. Maybe they'd always been like that. "I . . . I don't know what I . . . I'm sorry about Friday night. You know I won't mess things up like that again. You _know_ that."

She briefly remembered the feminine laugh she'd heard in his phone call a few weeks ago, and with a stab she allowed herself to realize what she'd truly known all along: that girl hadn't been a family friend. "It's not just –"

"It _is_ just that," he insisted, stepping closer to her and reaching out to brush her arm. She pulled away, feeling something painfully uncomfortable when he touched her, and a wave of sadness passed though his expression. He collected himself as best he could. "We were doing fine. If that hadn't happened, we'd _still_ be doing fine. It was just . . . just a mistake. We can just pretend it never happened. We can."

She felt cold inside and stepped back from him. "No. No, Logan. We can't pretend." She took a deep breath, countless disconnected, torn memories running through her head like a broken film. "I _won't_ pretend." Her voice was soft but, for the first time in awhile, very steady. "You don't love me," she added almost as an afterthought, searching his eyes for something, anything, that told her otherwise.

He looked like he'd been hit. His face glazed over for a second, and by the time he'd recovered it was too late. "I do," he answered quietly, reaching out for her again.

"You're lying." She smiled gently, a tear dripping down her cheek, but she didn't feel as hurt as she'd thought she would be. Something that had been coiled within her snapped open like it was on a time release spring. _Because you see, you don't love him either._

He said nothing. A pool of light washed over the floor as the sun sank toward the horizon. She tried to remember what it felt like before, when she'd believed in him, but quite suddenly couldn't. He looked down and then back up at her, and this time his question was a silent one.

"No," she whispered.

He nodded. They both knew that this was very much the end. The designs on his polo shirt were marred by shadow, as were the lines of his face. When he looked up at her, she saw no bitterness in him, which made her think perhaps he cared for her less than she thought. Maybe he already had a backup girlfriend. Or maybe he, too, had seen the finish line approaching ever since they had begun the race.

"Are you . . ." He paused, as if hesitating to ask, and then scratched the back of his head nervously before finishing. "Are you gonna go back to him?" She'd been wrong; there _was_ a little bitterness in his voice.

Her eyes closed painfully, like a wound was being torn open again. He watched her carefully, wondering what was so hurtful about her past that she couldn't stand to talk about it. He knew her answer, even if she didn't: it had been either one or the other, and in the end, her ex-boyfriend in the diner had been picked over him. He'd come to her dorm room with a million ways of saying sorry, a thousand different gut-wrenching scenarios in which she would forgive him and fall back into his arms and kiss him. But now he guessed he'd always known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it was over. Maybe it was something he had done, or maybe it was the hold her past still had on her, or some demented combination of both. Whatever it was, he stood there three feet away from her, but she might as well have been on the other side of the Atlantic. She was lost in some maze he couldn't reach her in.

And Logan Huntzberger was not ready to love, not in the way she needed.

"There's . . . there's nothing to go back to," she said finally, in a voice that was harsh even though it was quiet and sad. "I didn't cheat on you, Logan."

He knew she hadn't, at least not physically, but in her mind she had been unintentionally cheating on him for a long time. He didn't bring this up because he had no right to. He hadn't been faithful while they were together, and although he'd always thought that he hid it from her, it was apparent by the wounded look in her eyes that she knew. She knew.

He pressed his lips together and glanced around her dorm one last time. He wouldn't be invited in here again. He was not going to beg or grovel, not this time. Her words had struck a painful spot with him. _You don't love me._ He wondered if he'd ever really loved a woman. That wouldn't have mattered if she was as superficial in romance as he was, but he could see that she had really loved a man. He couldn't stand in the face of that kind of opposition.

His eyes lingered on the couch they had kissed on, the vase of flowers he'd bought her four or five days ago that were still fresh and blooming. Then, not knowing what to say, he awkwardly watched her open the door for him to leave.

"I'll still see you around, Ace," he finally muttered, knowing how lame that sounded but needing to say _something._ He wanted to hear her agree, to know that they could at least be mild acquaintances, but she continued to stare at him with empty eyes that weren't absorbing a thing he said. It scared him.

He mechanically walked into the hallway, opening his mouth to ask her that final question: _Where do we stand now?_ She answered it before it came out of his mouth by shutting the door softly in his face. He stood there for a second, two, three, and then turned and walked away.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note:** What happens in this chapter may seem a little sudden. So I'm kind of going out on a limb here. But . . . here it is. Thanks for the reviews.

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Friday nights in most Philadelphian places were always busy, but nothing quite compared to a bar.

Jess could still remember the first time he drank a beer. It had been five days after his eleventh birthday, an age that now seemed so young his first thought was that he was wrong, he had to have been older, but no. He'd been barely eleven years old. Beer had been a staple in his house for as long as he could recall; men came and went, but the one who never deserted Liz was Jack Daniels.

Most people started drinking as a result of peer pressure, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. Not Jess. He'd always been the kind of guy to be independent, to do everything alone, even his mistakes. It was summer, the most scorching time of the year, when New York City boiled and simmered under a shimmering cloud of heat. He went out on a walk. He'd been taking random walks since he was nine. When he came back, Liz was sitting on their old, ratty couch with smeared make up and bruises up and down her arms. She hadn't come home the night before. He stood there, staring at how defeated she looked, and then went deliberately over to the fridge and took out a can of beer, right in front of her. He remembered the sound it made when he popped it open. She looked at him blankly and her expression did not change when he lifted it to his lips and drank it. It burned his throat like hell, but he stubbornly swallowed every last drop while glaring at her defiantly and then locked himself in his room.

_Eleven. God . . ._

So now here he was, twenty years old, sitting in a bar in Philadelphia. He hated bars. They were too loud, too noisy, and he wasn't much on the social scene. When he drank, he preferred to do it like he did all other things: by himself. But books hadn't worked tonight and he needed the chaos to distract him. Alcohol alone wouldn't do it. He knew that. Maybe the lights and the music and the people would.

He thought about smoking, but realized he was receiving enough damn secondhand smoke at the moment to satisfy his cravings anyway, and he needed to save the cigarettes he could because they were expensive. He wasn't carded. A few other minors, he saw, were, but not him. His eyes were too hard, his posture too go-to-hell for anyone to believe he was underage.

A few girls had come up to him in the hour he'd been here. At one time, he wouldn't have hesitated a second before sleeping with any of them. Maybe tomorrow he'd wake up and be the same way. But right now the thought didn't even cross his mind, and his coldness towards them had eventually driven each one away. He'd had to be particularly blunt to a couple, but he knew they just moved on to another guy once they were turned down by him. That was the way this track of life he was stuck on worked, blurs and speed and noise and booze.

He wasn't one to take a liking to fancy drinks, and although he held liquor well he wasn't going to risk bombarding himself with a vodka or a straight up whiskey, either. He simply stared into a bottle of beer that had been in front of him for the past half hour, his second since he'd been here. He had hardly touched it.

Jess heard a man next to him order a Bacardi. He didn't look over right away but began guessing. A middle-aged man, slightly balding, maybe a little overweight. Glasses . . . well, no, actually, no glasses, but a suit jacket and a wrinkled tie. The kind of man who committed suicide because he felt he was going bankrupt, but in truth made three times as much as his neighbor who had to support a whole family. A man whose hands broke when they became dirty. Jess had met many such men. He tilted his head minutely to get a glance. Dead on.

The music that was drowned out by laughter and talking was giving him a headache. He realized that coming here had been pointless, and after resolving to avoid it at all costs in the future, no matter how crazy Leo was driving him or who Matthew was sleeping with, he paid, closed his tab and left.

The night air was sharp and a little cool. He turned up his coarse navy jacket's collar and began to walk in a general northern direction, back to the publishing house. So the bar hadn't worked. He wasn't that surprised, not really.

He passed a man and a woman, both well into their forties, dressed in matching white jogging suits, and blandly wondered what in the hell possessed them to actually go out in public like that. Maybe it was a threat at gunpoint, or they were disillusioned by all the flashing neon light, or the last decade just hadn't been good to them. He was still meditating on them and rejoicing over the fact that at least there was one mental issue he did not have when he wove through the crowd and climbed up the steps into Truncheon.

"You pulled another disappearing act. Like that damn magician. Houdini," Leo immediately stated when Jess walked in. It was almost like he had been sitting in front of the door waiting. Jess made a quick note in his head to slip in through the window in the back next time. He shut the door.

"Just call me Harry."

"What?"

Jess shook his head and took a book out from his jacket pocket. _Ninety-Three._ He thought about leaving against just to mess with Leo's mind, but he didn't really feel like dealing with people right now, especially the kind that dressed in matching white jogging suits. He should be working, he had a lot to do, and maybe he would . . . later. As it stood at the moment, he'd most likely just put big red "X"s over every manuscript he read. He hated getting into these introverted moods. At least they were just moods now, the exception instead of the rule. Most of the time. Sometimes. Every once and awhile.

Just as he was beginning to go upstairs, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Chris looking at him with his mouth in a straight line and his eyes heavy and dull. With an eyebrow raised, he slid Chris' hand off of him. "Have physical contact and I ever been mistaken for good friends?" He asked suspiciously, closing his book in confusion.

"Where have you been? You've been gone for hours . . ." Chris trailed off. Jess snuck a glance at his thick-banded wrist watch. It was nine-thirty and he had left at five. He didn't even remember what he'd done before going to the bar. He felt something heavy in the air and knew something was wrong, but remained silent. His experience told him not to ask when something was wrong. It caught up to him soon enough.

"You got a phone call around eight."

He began to count the number of awful beige diamonds on the curtains behind Chris' head. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . .

"It was from a guy. Said he was your uncle."

The diamonds got old in a few seconds. Instead, he began to mentally recite the lyrics to a clash song he'd only heard once or twice, "Guns on the Roof." He did so with the distinct knowledge that he was still getting every word right, regardless of how unfamiliar with it he was.

"He . . . he wanted to tell you in person, but he doesn't have a cell phone . . ."

That put an end to the clash song recital. Luke rarely needed to tell him things so specifically. A twisting in his gut told him exactly who this message involved, and resentfully, the last thought before he knew for sure was: _Typical._

"A girl was in a car accident tonight, Jess. He told me her name, but there was so much commotion that I –"

"Rory," Jess supplied monotonously, feeling like his legs were being ripped out from under him. He didn't see the surprised glance Chris shot him before looking back to the floor, as if afraid to meet Jess' dull, empty eyes. He was very numb at first. He again noticed the horrible beige diamonds.

"She's okay, or at least she's in stable condition, but her friend is pretty messed up. They have to operate."

Lane. God, not Lane. It couldn't be Lane, could it? Shit. His hands started to shake and he fumbled blindly for a cigarette, but the moment it touched his fingers he threw it to the other side of the room. "Dammit!" He yelled, his calm exterior finally breaking. "Dammit." There was a moment where he looked like he was weighing something, and then his eyes became solid with an intense kind of determination, the numbness gone. "Where are they?"

Chris swallowed heavily. "They're at the hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. Your uncle was calling from his house, but he said he'd be with her soon, that it wasn't very far –"

"Twenty-two point eight miles," he said bitterly, demons from his past tearing at him and making it difficult to breathe.

"He was just going to call the mothers before he went. But . . ." Here he hesitated, as if afraid to bring more bad news. Jess gritted his teeth impatiently before Chris went on. "Rory's mother is in Europe. Something to do with a convention."

He closed his eyes in shock. Unbelievable. How in the hell would Rory get through this without Lorelai? Who was with her? Jesus, not just Luke. Not just Luke. He didn't know how to handle these kinds of situations, and Rory was sitting somewhere, waiting for a doctor to tell her whether or not her best friend was going to live or die. That was, if she herself wasn't badly injured.

He felt like he had been hit by a steel train. It only took him two seconds to decide.

He took the stairs three at a time and stuffed a few T-shirts, a random sweatshirt, a pair of sweatpants, and two pairs of jeans into his cargo duffel bag. An image of Rory flitted through his mind momentarily and, with his arm, he swept all the random books on his bed into it as well. He was zipping it as he ran back down the stairs and began to search his pockets with shaking hands for his car keys.

The entire time he cynically asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing. He was probably going to make things worse. That's what he usually did anyway, especially in relation to Rory. Upon first meeting her almost four years ago, he had completely overturned her entire life from day one.

He couldn't find the keys and swore more heavily than he had in a long time. Leo, Matthew, and Chris were all standing nervously in the doorway, but to him the world had narrowed until it encompassed one place, New Haven, and that was where he was trying to get to. He didn't even notice the three of them watching him like he was about to explode.

Jess had a reputation for being calm under any crisis, and up until this very second, that had been true. He tried to recollect himself and remember what he'd somehow forgotten: nothing could be gained by losing your head. He had to find his cool exterior. After a beat of heavy breathing, he managed to stop the shaking in his hands.

_Keys. Right. Where are the keys? In your leather jacket by the door._

He grabbed his jacket off its hook and strode over to the door that spilled into the back alleyway, where his car was parked beside a dumpster. He had no idea how long he was going to be gone. It was entirely plausible, maybe even hopeful, that he would change his mind fifteen minutes into the drive and turn back around.

But he probably wouldn't. Cigarettes and alcohol were nothing compared to his addiction to her.

"I'll be back when I'm back," was all he said, and even then he wasn't sure if the words had actually left his mouth. He forgot to close the door behind him. After throwing his leather jacket and his duffel bag into the back seat, he climbed in and started up the car. The engine was still cold as he pulled onto the main highway.

Something hit him at about the sixty-second mile marker. He had always convinced himself that there would be more time, that he would somehow get another chance. It was inevitable; fate seemed determined to push them together. If not today, than the next day, and if not the next day, then maybe the day after that. As much as he'd tried to deny it, that's what his mentality had been since the morning he left for California. He was running not just from her, but _for_ her, a sacrifice so that she could move on with her life and go to places he'd never be able to reach. But, in the end, he'd always relied on the idea that one day he would come back different, better, and everything would be okay. It was time for the truth: that hope alone kept him sane while he wandered across the east coast. Even after she denied him in her dorm, that agonizing gleam of hope refused to die.

And now, ever so painfully, he was realizing that maybe they weren't guaranteed forever. Maybe he was being selfish by daring to think that she would always be there when they were both ready. Perhaps destiny's cruel game was to keep them apart because of their erratic and mysterious need for each other at the wrong times.

How many days had he wasted? It made his head hurt.

It didn't matter anymore. Nothing could change what was already done. All he knew was that, no matter how self-serving and damn independent he was, he couldn't leave her alone in a hospital. The mental image of her sitting there, by herself, immediately erased all the sins they had committed against each other throughout their relationship. She was Rory and he was Jess, and nothing else freaking mattered.

_Rory._ He had been trying to avoid thinking her name for far too long, and now it was like a chant in his head, water for his dehydrated soul. _Rory, Rory, Rory . . . _

_"'No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him. To some men it never comes; let them rest and be thankful! To me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; and the bottom of this raging sea,' he said striking himself upon the breast, 'has been heaved up ever since.'"_

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It was strange to her that so many things could be going on around her and yet she felt so barren. There was a bandage on her stomach, but that was the only true injury she had suffered: a minor cut on her stomach. More like a scratch. The bruise on her collarbone from the seatbelt was small and purple, hardly worth mentioning. Interesting, then, that her pale blue dress and white sweater were covered in blood.

Voices came to her like they were a long way off, on the other side of some chasm she couldn't cross. She tried to, tried to come over that inexplicable gulf between them, but she could find no bridge. At first people had tried to ask her questions, but now they only stopped to say something in reassurance or check her over once again to make sure she wasn't mysteriously bleeding to death from holes they hadn't noticed when she was first examined.

They offered to let her stay overnight, or at least relax in a room, but she refused. The moment the doctors released her, she found the waiting room in the New Haven Hospital and sat in a stiff, plastic chair with a cup of coffee that someone – maybe Luke? – had pressed into her hand. She knew she should drink it, but by the time she finally felt like she could do so without throwing up it had grown stone cold. She dropped it and it splattered across the tile floor. It had been cleaned up since then. She couldn't remember seeing anyone with a mop.

Lung reconstructive and spinal corrective surgeries. That was what the man had said Lane needed. It was funny how she could no longer connect those words with anything. Maybe it meant they were just going to slap on some gauze, like they did for her. It had scared her, the idea of the lung reconstructive and spinal corrective surgeries, but in the few hours since then she'd been steadily slipping to a state where verbalizing was completely pointless. Again and again she saw the smashed in side of the door disappearing into the folds of Lane's T-shirt, and again and again she remembered the numb feeling of crawling out onto the pavement, virtually unscathed, and having to go down on her belly in a sticky splotch of Lane's blood to reach back into the car in an attempt to get her best friend out.

The chasm continued to widen. Mrs. Kim was here, along with some other Koreans that she would probably recognize if she tried hard enough but couldn't at the moment. There was no crying. She, too, did not cry. The shock was just too heavy, squeezing her until there wasn't any room for tears in her system. She remembered Luke asking her if she wanted him to call her grandparents, and she remembered saying no. What she couldn't remember is why she refused.

Luke sat next to her now, worriedly staring at her. He offered her his heavy fisherman's coat once, two hours ago or so, but she had not taken it. She wished she had; she was very cold, but even though she could feel his sleeve against her elbow he seemed too far away for her to ask if he would give his coat to her again. When he had first walked in, almost immediately after they'd gotten to the hospital, he'd hugged her. It was strange how fatherly he felt and smelled, more so than her own father. That reminded her. She didn't know if Christopher had been told or not. He probably had. So why wasn't he here?

It was midnight, but she wasn't tired. She wasn't much of anything, really.

When the door to the waiting room opened, she didn't look up. Her gaze was fixed on the far white wall, not seeing, just staring. She felt how Luke stiffened. The entire room of people from Stars Hollow, most of whom she hadn't stopped to notice, became very still and silent, like they were in the presence of an apparition.

And then he was standing in front of her. She didn't think he was real at first. It seemed impossible to her that he could be here when she needed him. He was never there when she needed him.

His brown eyes closed momentarily in pain as he took in the sight of her, her white sweater stained with dry, crusty brown patches of blood, dark speckles on her dress, her curled hair tangled, pieces of asphalt glued to a few stray strands. He saw how empty she looked, the unspilled tears on her eyelashes, how lonely and forsaken she was, and his heart shattered for the first time in his entire life.

"Jesus, Rory," he muttered, dropping down on his knees in front of her, unable to believe what he saw. He gently touched the bruise on her collarbone. No one else in the room mattered to him in that second, and he looked at her with an agony that was finally visible, one he absolutely could not hide.

She bit her lip so hard it bled. After a moment of silence, she lurched forward against him, sobbing uncontrollably in such a violent way that she thought her heart was going to burst. She sank down from the chair to him on the floor, soaking his jacket, as he sat back and held her in arms that kept her steady while she shook and shook. Finally, someone else was on her side of the chasm.

_"'Accounts are not quite settled between us,' said she, with a passion that equaled my own. 'I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first; now you must test the other.'"_


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's Note:** I'm so sorry about the delay; life's been kind of crazy. But I really want to thank everyone for the reviews and support I received on the last chapter. I hope this one fosters as much :)

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It was natural for Lorelai to be a strong woman. Having had a daughter at sixteen and being determined to raise her on her own, she had beaten that strength into herself with the force of a sixty pound sledgehammer. Weakness wasn't part of her character.

She reminded herself of this again and again on the airplane back to the States, the first one she'd been able to grab, the one Michel had threatened five French security officers and a man behind the desk at the check-in to retrieve for her. Tears threaded their way down her face. She looked at her reflection in the pitch black window beside her, easily visible against the gathering night. When had she turned so . . . old? She'd aged ten years in the last two hours.

Rory wasn't hurt. She knew that. But she was alone, in the midst of chaos, which she'd never been good at. She would be falling and falling and falling, all by herself, with no one to grab her hand and pull her back up because no one could see that she was falling in the first place. Lorelai had failed miserably for the first time in twenty years of motherhood: her baby needed her, and she was nowhere to be found. The one thing she had sworn she would never do, the one thing that had stained her own early life, was what she had ended up doing. She had deserted her daughter.

Her hands clenched on the armrest and her fingernails dug into her palm until the skin broke. She almost hadn't answered the call to her cell phone when she saw on her caller ID that it was Luke. After all, wasn't that why she'd left Stars Hollow so abruptly in the first place? To escape Luke and the terrifying thing that had happened between them? But somehow, somewhere deep within her, fear of not answering had welled up that was greater than the fear of answering.

The words he'd spoken were burned in her brain as if he'd had a four-thousand mile long brand. _"The first thing you have to know is she's okay."_ Nothing was okay. Nothing was okay because she wasn't there to make it okay.

The iced water that the flight attendant had gotten her was so cold it numbed her thoughts for a little while. She was looking for any sort of distraction, even though she didn't deserve one. Her whole body was on fire. Each minute that ticked by was unbelievably slow, driving a white hot knife deeper and deeper under her skin, closer and closer to her heart. Lane. Lane's mother. Rory. Without her mother . . .

She wished she had told Luke to make Rory leave the hospital and go back to Yale for the night. Rory hated hospitals, but then again, she remembered, so did Luke. They should have both left until tomorrow morning. They couldn't do anything for Lane.

But she knew that she wouldn't have made Rory go. She knew she would have just sat there and held her and cried with her. She knew that was what she still needed to do.

The coal-colored Atlantic stretched around her on every side for what seemed like an eternity.

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Rory had finally fallen asleep at around three in the morning. It happened gradually, and, like all gradual things, painfully. Every time she seemed about to drift off, someone would come in with more news or more questions and push her into that space where she was restless and upset, where her breathing would become shallow and then suddenly quicken, where her hands would reach out and clench in Jess' shirt. Eventually the comings and goings stopped for a little while. Most of the Stars Hollow residents who had come to see what was going on went home for the night. Lane was out of surgery, unable to have any visitors at all, not even her estranged mother, and no news had been given yet of her condition. Luke was slumped against the vending machine, head back, eyes closed, but awake. Rory's sleep was superficial, barely skimming beneath consciousness, but enough for now.

Jess shrugged off his navy jacket and draped it over her where she was curled up in the chair next to him. It was just a sort of automatic gesture. She was so helpless, so devastatingly innocent in the middle of all this shit around her, that for a while he could not see her as the Rory who had haunted him for two years, but only the Rory who blushed whenever he swore and never wore skirts that went above her thigh. It was what it was, and there wasn't another way to explain it.

He was hit by a completely unreasonable wave of guilt when he looked at her lying there. Okay, maybe not completely unreasonable, but magnified by the hurt she was feeling. He wished that he could take it all away, all of her pain, and put it on him instead, but he couldn't. He just couldn't.

When he stood up, Luke's eyes snapped open. They were alone in the waiting room at the moment, all of Lane's family having gone to pray in the hospital's tiny chapel. Jess wished he could pray. He'd tried it a few times, but he was too ashamed to do it now. He watched as Luke got up, too, and motioned him towards the door. His entire body went on defensive mode, knowing that he was about to be bombarded with questions he wouldn't want to answer. He didn't have to answer, he reminded himself. He usually didn't answer.

He glanced one last time at Rory, and was shaken by the twisting he felt inside. He didn't want to leave her. He was so sick of leaving her.

When he slipped out into the hallway, his head started to throb and he realized for the first time how tired he was. He had made the drive here in a record-breaking two-and-a-half hours, with his stomach churning and his blood pounding the whole time. He didn't know how long he was going to be here. Stars Hollow would probably swallow Rory up to take care of her and spit him out. That was what the trend was. He should leave before they made him leave, take any semblance of dignity, but for some reason dignity didn't seem quite as attractive to him anymore. Hell, sure it did, but maybe that wasn't the way to go about it.

He ran his hands through his hair, the same messy style he'd had when he'd live with Luke two years ago standing even more on end. The whiteness of the walls burned his eyes. The brief idea of finding the nearest paint store occurred to him, but then he realized how crazy he sounded and leaned against a railing, hands in his pockets, staring at the tile floor.

Luke folded his arms across his chest and stared at him in his typical uncomfortable way. Jess could tell he was even more ill at ease than usual, because since Lorelai wasn't here, he was the only wall that stood between Rory and the wanton loser. This was stupid. They were both twenty years old now, perfectly capable of making their own decisions. And that had nothing to do with the situation, nothing at all. Those acidic, harsh feelings were on the back burner now, swept under the rug. He looked through the glass of the door at Rory's bent form, her hair half covering her face, his jacket pulled up to her chin, blood on her dress. No, things were different this time.

"You're here," Luke finally grunted, bobbing awkwardly on the balls of his feet. He looked like he needed an aspirin. Jeez, they could all use a massive load of aspirin.

Jess looked up from the floor for a second and then back down. "Here, there, everywhere. Perk of the Marlon Brando lifestyle," he muttered. He really wanted to avoid this discussion. Maybe if he faked a heart attack or something. Then again, this was a hospital; the ruse wouldn't last long. What he wanted even more was to go back in that waiting room, because to him the idea of Rory waking up alone was a highly unpleasant one. But at the same time he also didn't want to go back in the waiting room. He didn't want to have to face her. _Stop with this multiple personality crap._

"But you weren't in when I called."

A man on a stretcher was wheeled by them with an oxygen tube. Luke seemed hit by a wave of nausea and Jess watched in amusement as he looked up at the ceiling and gulped for air. The man and the orderlies with him passed. He said nothing.

After a beat of recovery, Luke cleared his throat and decided to pretend that they hadn't been interrupted. "I called you because I thought . . . hell, I don't remember what I thought. I know she means – meant? – jeez." He took a deep breath. Jess remembered vaguely the last time he and his uncle had talked seriously about Rory. It had been right after a barroom brawl. That was classy. The whole thing had ended with a pile of self help books he'd seriously considered burning.

He'd never been a heart-to-heart kind of guy, and he was even less in the mood for any discussion at the moment. But out of some sort of disgruntled respect for his uncle, he at least stood there and listened.

"I just didn't want . . . I didn't want you to hear it from someone else, later," Luke finally finished. Someone else . . . out of all the painfully intimate friends Jess had in Stars Hollow? There was Liz, he guessed, but he didn't talk to her more than once a month and she was so flighty she'd never remember to tell him something like this. He looked at his uncle curiously. And then he realized that maybe, perhaps, as insane as it seemed, Luke too could feel the bubbling and terrifying and raging connection that refused to be killed, even when Jess and Rory went at it with machetes or switchblades or scalpels. Jess' face remained expressionless.

Luke sighed in frustration and at last asked his question straight out. "Why did you come here, Jess?" That was it. That's what Jess had been trying to escape. He felt like someone was sitting on his chest. "I mean, you have a right to be worried, but you could've . . . you could've found out she was okay. Sent a get well card or something. Called, maybe."

Jess looked at him in disbelief, shaking his head sarcastically and reaching for a cigarette before he remembered that first of all his jacket wasn't on him anymore and second of all smoking in a hospital wouldn't be applauded. His eyes became darker and colder. "A get well card? When in the hell have I ever sent a frigging get well card?" He was angry, angry with something indefinable, something he couldn't see or touch. Not that that was new for him.

"Then you could've called. Jeez, Jess. You can't just keep showing up and taking off. It's not –"

"Dammit. If you say 'it's not fair' I'm gonna . . ." He took a deep breath to calm himself and shifted against the railing. "Her best friend might die tonight." He wanted to add _"Don't you understand that?"_ but realized that Luke didn't. No, he hadn't stood in the back of a funeral parlor when he was fifteen, staring at the cheap pine casket, beating himself up for not being there when his best friend overdosed. He hadn't seen an empty desk in school every few weeks and not even asked the question, just read it in the obituary and been forced to accept it.

"It hurts her to see you," Luke muttered, looking at Jess with a face that was quite plainly asking for forgiveness for having to say these terrible things. Jess shook his head to indicate the apology was unnecessary.

"Yeah, I'm sure it does," he said bitterly, an ironic smirk on his face. He was quite positive Rory didn't feel too much of anything from seeing him anymore. He'd screwed up one too many times somewhere a couple of years back. After that random phone call, he'd understood that she could hang up with no strings attached and he hated himself for not being able to do the same.

He saw Luke looking over his shoulder, staring at Rory sleeping fitfully under Jess' jacket. "You _cannot_ walk out of here without telling her," his uncle said firmly, his feet spread in his typical stance, his stubble making his face even more haggard looking in the unflattering light. Jess had been thinking, honestly, about leaving, but even he knew he wouldn't.

"I know that."

Luke looked at him with raised eyebrows. The honest response obviously made him feel like pushing his luck. "You will not hurt her this time."

However, he wasn't so fortunate with this statement. Jess glared at him. "I told you how I . . . what I . . . Do you think I'd feel like that and then try to hurt her? Do you think I did it on _purpose_? That I meant to go after her with an ax?" He exhaled and then became calm again. "She's over it." His voice, though monotonous, was betrayed by the stormy look in his eyes.

Luke had the vague memory of Lorelai at his kitchen table a month ago. _No, no Luke, she doesn't. She still loves Jess._ He shook his head and didn't know what to say. It made him feel sick, and combined with the hospital smell it was making him dizzy. Jeez, he'd tried to understand this strange chaotic mess of Rory and Jess for a long time, but he still didn't get it. There was something. He felt it from both ends. It was powerful, impossible not to notice, scary to him, since he had never believed in that crap. Even after two years, even after California and that rich moron and Yale, it was still there.

He tried to remind himself of what Jess had said to him last year. He'd since apologized, in his Jess-like silent way, for it, but Luke wasn't entirely sure he had been completely wrong. _You have to fix everything. You have to fix everyone. _This wasn't something he could clean up. Whenever it seemed to disappear, it just came back again.

Jess looked up from the tile and stepped away from the wall. "I'm going to go for a walk," he said evenly, his hands still in his pockets like some reincarnation of, well, James Dean. He was some hell of a puzzle to try to figure out, but Luke knew, with a kind of hard certainty, that he could be proud of this particular James Dean. He didn't even warn him again about leaving. It was clear that Jess had no intentions of doing anything close to that; in fact, he kept glancing behind him as if he didn't even want to leave the hallway. Still, without saying another word or waiting for permission, because he hadn't even asked for permission back when it'd been required, he turned around and almost instantly vanished around a corner, silent.

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It wasn't like it was in the movies when Rory woke up. She hadn't forgotten what had happened and she knew exactly where she was. She didn't remember having any dreams, or even sleeping at all. Her feet were cold because her black pumps had slipped off. The chair dug into her back and the light burned through her eyelids. But something still seemed . . . different.

She realized almost instantly what it was. She didn't smell anything remotely similar to a hospital room. Instead, she breathed in smoke, hair gel, aftershave, leather. It was comfortingly familiar, lulling in a way. She did not open her eyes.

All at once she remembered. She recognized the scent. Sitting bolt upright with wide open eyes, she stared around the room, raking each corner for him, desperately searching for him, knowing nothing except that he was solid and she needed something solid to hold onto, certain he'd been part of a dream and this was just the dream's extension. But when she saw him sitting in a chair by the door, leaning over a book with a pen twisting idly between his fingers, she knew it wasn't. He was real. He had a shape and an outline and he was breathing. But she had forgotten to.

The sudden intake of air she took made her sputter, and he looked up. He didn't say anything, just watched her watching him, his beautifully tragic bronze eyes peeling her apart to look inside of her soul. She felt like he had a razor that he was cutting at her with. Three years full of transgressions made the air between them heavy, almost metallic and sour, burning her tongue. She wanted to ask him so many, many questions, but there are times when words are not meant to be spoken. It was different than last time, when they'd met in Stars Hollow. This was raw, this was naked, this was everything he'd been running from and she'd been trying to ignore staring them both in the face.

He closed his book, keeping his place with his finger, eye contact never breaking from hers. She realized that his scent came from his jacket, and it was draped around her shoulders, dangling off one arm from the movement she'd made sitting up. She didn't take it off, which probably meant something, but she wasn't capable of analyzing things at the moment. A few hours ago, she had been disconnected, floating, empty, but now she was almost embedded in reality, so much so that it hurt.

She opened her mouth to finally break the sacred silence but her voice box seemed broken. Tears formed in her eyes as she struggled to talk. He answered her unspoken question. "She's out of surgery. Mrs. Kim is up with her now. She's just waking up."

She nodded and finally managed to make sound. "Is she . . . how is she . . .?"

He didn't look away, but boldly continued to bore into her with his gaze. "She's gonna be fine." He didn't say anything for a second. "Her recovery isn't going to be exactly a . . . blast . . . but they got in there and did what they needed to do . . . she's still hooked up to a respirator. They, uh, they think she'll be off by Sunday or Monday."

The tears she'd been fighting streamed down her cheeks, but this time they were silent tears of relief. She buried her face in her hands and shook. He let her give thanks or rejoice or mourn or whatever it was she was doing, and when she finally looked up again, he was resting his chin on his interlocked fingers. She looked at him sitting there in his olive button-down shirt, his facial features highlighted by the light, his jeans torn at the cuffs, and it was almost like he'd never really left. But only almost.

"You . . . you're . . . how did you know?" She whispered, and the look on her face, like she'd expected to get struck by lightning before she had him when she needed him, gave his insides a vicious twist. He swallowed and his throat burned like he was drinking vodka.

"Luke."

"Oh." She paused for a second, and then in a great, tumbling rush, she babbled, "I'm so sorry about the phone call last week. I didn't mean all those things that I said and I know that you probably think I'm a jerk and I know it was stupid to call you and I don't know why I did and then I just turned on you when I was the one who dialed your number in the first place and –"

This was the bandaging part of their relationship, where they scurried around helplessly to try and find any sort of gauze that they could slap onto their bleeding wounds. He smirked his typical smirk and leaned back into his chair. "Don't." He could have apologized, too, but didn't.

She felt him watching her carefully again, his eyes running over every part of her body, not necessarily in lust but more in disbelief. She felt how he lingered on the large bruise on her collarbone, the blood, the stains, the tears in her nylon stockings. When he spoke again, his voice sounded strangely tight. "You need to change. That look went out with Woodstock."

"I want to go see Lane."

He nodded. "I know. There's only supposed to be two visitors at a time. Mrs. Kim and some cousin or endeared barber or something are up there now. I'll take you up in a minute. But . . ." His eyes were on her again, and when he looked up they seemed pained. "Get some different clothes on, okay?" She had never seen that hurt in him before. Nodding mutely, she stood up and went to the chair that he indicated with a turn of his head. A pair of grey sweatpants and a black hardcore T-shirt were folded neatly on it. He had brought clothes . . . that meant he was planning on staying, didn't it? Her knees felt like Jell-O and she allowed herself the thought that yes, it did mean he was planning on staying, until her head reminded her that one never knew with him. He could be gone before she came back from the bathroom. She felt a strange burning in her chest.

"My mom . . .?"

"Luke went to go pick her up. Her plane gets in at six this morning. It's only . . ." he checked his watch. "It's only four-thirty." He let out a shaky breath. "Okay. God, Rory. Go change." His fingers began to bend the paperback cover of his book.

She gathered his clothes in her arms and slipped out of the room in her bare feet, turning to look back at him once. He was already reading again. The second she looked away his eyes fixed on her, but she didn't see it. She found a deserted bathroom down the hallway and entered it, locking the door behind her and staring at her reflection in the mirror.

She looked dead. Honestly, truly dead. The rims under her eyes were dark purple and splotchy, her skin was so pale it almost looked grey. Her hair hung limp and greasy by her face. The worst part, of course, was the stains. She took off Jess' jacket, carefully putting it on the edge of the sink with his other clothes. She didn't recognize herself.

_"Oh my God."  
"What?"_

_"Oh my God!"_

She heard Lane's frantic scream in her head and then splashed her cheeks with cold water from the sink. She peeled her white sweater off and then her blue dress, both of which she folded. With hands that were relatively steady considering the circumstances, she managed to wet her skin and rub off the crusty blood in flakes.

She stood there on the cold tile, barefoot and almost naked, for a while. How long exactly, she did not know. It might have been ten seconds or it might have been ten minutes. Her mind was working at that place where time was completely irrelevant.

A pounding on the door shook her out of whatever level of consciousness she was in. She jumped, terrified, suddenly very cold. "Rory! You having a diplomatic conference in there?" She heard Jess ask. When she didn't answer for a second too long, he banged on the door again. "Rory! Are you okay?"

She felt her eyes burning and realized he might come barging in if she didn't make some noise. That was more than she could bear. "Hold on a second," she said unsteadily, pulling his sweatpants up over her hips. They were too big, but she managed to knot the drawstring a couple of times and roll up the cuffs so she wouldn't trip. They were beaten in and comfortable, worn shiny on the knees from overuse. That made her smile a little, despite everything. When she yanked his T-shirt on, it almost felt like him, crazy as it seemed. She glanced at it in the mirror and felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. He'd had this shirt back when they were seventeen.

She closed her eyes briefly and remembered how badly she'd wanted to steal one of his shirts when they'd been dating, but she never had. Then she gathered up her own clothes and, after putting on his jacket again and unlocking the door, left the bathroom. She was still shoeless.

He was standing a few paces away against the wall, scratching into the floor with his sneaker and drumming his fingers on his closed book. He looked up and his mouth formed that crooked grin she'd always adored about him.

"You look good in my clothes," he mumbled, much more at ease now that she didn't look like she'd been attacked or knifed or raped. It was strange how it wasn't strange to see her in his pants and shirt and jacket. It was almost normal, almost expected. He vaguely wondered if his concept of normal also included Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming president and space creatures walking the streets. That was when he realized he was becoming far too tired. He'd try to find a highly caffeinated soda somewhere in a little while.

But not now. The gravity of the circumstances hit him again like a mallet. He took a deep breath.

"Mrs. Kim is sleeping in one of the ICU parent rooms now," he said quietly, tucking his book in his back jean pocket and waiting for her to connect the dots. It didn't take very long. Usually, her thought process was like a ten-page seminar, but not tonight.

"So two people can go in now? Can you . . . take me up . . . I want . . . I need to see her," she stumbled nervously, but with an unbending determination in her expression. He was proud of her in that second. He licked his lips and nodded.

Maybe he shouldn't be the one doing this. Maybe he shouldn't be the one taking her to see her best friend who had just finished traumatic surgery needed as a result of an accident that had happened while she was driving. Maybe he shouldn't be the one she was forced to count on because, he had to face it, he didn't have the best reliability record. But the facts were that he was here and no one else was. Damn what happened earlier. He refused to let her down when she was reaching for him.

He started walking in the direction they needed to go and she followed. He wanted to wrap his arm around her so she could lean against him, but didn't. Her bare feet made soft padding noises on the floor as they neared the elevators.

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Rory reached out a trembling finger to trace the glossy midnight colored hair that spilled across the stiff white pillow and onto the mattress, but pulled back before any contact was made. She stood almost shapelessly by the bed, staring at the softly closed eyelids, the white lips, the rounded forehead. He watched as she examined with extreme interest the delicate thin blue skin between the bridge of her best friend's nose and the corner of her eye. The IV stuck in Lane's thin wrist was connected to a tall metal stand looped with several bags of fluids, which Rory glanced at for half a second before listening to each heartbeat on the heart monitor with a hand covering her face.

He said nothing. He hardly entered the room, but instead stayed half in the hallway, unwilling to intrude on something so exclusive. The hairs on his arm stood on end as he catalogued the deep lacerations across Lane's face and down her neck, swathed with ointment and the more serious ones bandaged. He wondered what had happened in that car, why Rory just had a small mark on her collarbone and Lane had been operated on, but he did not ask.

He saw how Rory gently touched Lane's motionless fingertips, lightly brushing against a fingernail and across a palm. Her tears fell slowly, spaced by several seconds, hitting the thin mattress like petals. She whispered something he couldn't hear, something that made her voice sound soft and bruised, and then she bit her lip to hold in the sobs. He suddenly felt very isolated and cold, watching her go through misery when he'd always saw her as untouchable. He hated that anguish could get its clammy, disgusting fingers on her. He hated that he hadn't stopped it from happening.

_What would you have done if you'd known?_

She bowed her head, a curtain of hair hiding her face, and he felt something inside of him rip. He took a deep breath as he finally understood something she said, "Forgive me." It was so simple, so gut-wrenching, so broken that it sounded like it had been torn from the lips of an angel. He felt the walls closing in on him, constricting him, and as he stood in that cold room staring at the very epitome of innocence weeping over her closest friend's motionless body, he wanted to run. The attack came quite suddenly. He closed his eyes for a second to ward it off.

When he opened them, she had extended her hand out to him. The room was dark except for the light emitted by multiple beeping machines. In the glow, he saw her reaching for him, trying to find him. "Jess . . ." She said his name like a prayer, pleading, desperate. His chest was suddenly very tight.

When he walked over to her, she didn't touch him. The air between them sizzled with the need to be closed, but neither of them did so. There was a speaking silence instead, one that told of mistakes that had to be let go, pain that they were both too tired to hang onto anymore. They both stared at Lane, feeling each beep of the heart monitor pound with the blood in their veins, unwilling to say a word.


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's Note: **There really isn't much to say with this chapter. It's pretty much self-explanatory, hope you like it, and, as always, thank you so much for the reviews.

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"There's something else I need to tell you," Luke muttered, clutching the shift to switch the gear. There had been silence in the truck's cab for the past twenty minutes, broken by an occasional, almost unregistered sound of pain from Lorelai. She gripped the handle on the door with fingers that were like ice, grey, freezing, still. Her connecting flight in Newark had been delayed, and that had seriously worn away at whatever endurance she'd manage to sustain herself with. With each mile that the hospital became closer, it was like she'd never get to Rory. It was a horrible feeling, a dreadfully, burningly numb feeling, one that hurt like her back was being flogged.

She didn't think she could process any new information, but she also knew that she had to. She was going to be forced to be the one that was strong in this situation, who held everyone together. She was terrified of the state she was going to find her daughter in. "What?" Her voice was breathless, like she was running a marathon instead of sitting safely in the passenger seat with her seatbelt fastened.

Luke cleared his throat and drummed his now unoccupied fingertips on the dashboard before pretending to be particularly engaged with the nonexistent traffic. She stared at him. It was hard to be thrown together with him like this, now, and for the millionth time since twelve hours ago she couldn't believe how stupid she had been to leave. Her unprecedented running act made things even more awkward between Luke and herself than they would have already been, the only other person she could count on to maintain a slightly firm grip on reality. But . . . what was more, and what she hated thinking about . . . she felt like she was drifting on an open sea, lonely, solitary, without any hand to keep her steady or any reassuring warmth to keep her from dying of exposure. She had isolated him just when she was finally shown how much she really needed him.

For a second, she saw him leaning in to kiss her, and she remembered everything that had followed. Then it was gone.

"Uh . . ." He looked like he wanted to cross his arms, but obviously, he couldn't. She felt her stomach turning. _Breathe. You need to stay calm, no matter what she says. You know she's okay. You know she's okay. _"Listen, I didn't ask for this . . ." She waited without blinking, impatient, frustrated. He glanced over at her once and then back at the dark road that stretched before them. "Jess came."

At first, the words didn't mean anything. They were too improbable, impossible. They bounced off of her like rain on a windshield; she had far too many other tangible things on her mind. But when the line "Sorry, that's not what I meant," never came, it hit her hard and heavy, hurting like vinegar on a gash.

"He . . . he's . . . there? Now?" She asked, trying to put together what that might entail, but she could not. Scenes were running through her head like some demented movie: Rory crying, Rory staring at the phone waiting for it to ring, Rory in a cast, Rory's eyes on her lap when she heard he was gone. She remembered the quiet sobs her daughter had thought she hadn't heard, the ones that continued through the early hours of morning, the ones that left her listless for days. Then there was that look on Rory's face, when they saw him sleeping in the back of his car, seemingly close enough to touch but truly hundreds of miles away, and the expression when Rory realized that Jess didn't love her, that he never had, that he had used her.

"He's there. Now." Luke was nervous, like he knew he should have told her earlier, but she had no room in her system for wasted anger. A horrible thought had embedded itself in her brain. _Jess, the wanderer, the deserter, the liar, is there. And I'm not._

"You . . . called him?"

"After I called you first," he explained hurriedly, getting off at the New Haven exit. Lorelai felt a hand with an iron grip squeezing her lungs. "I knew he'd want to know. I didn't think he'd – But he's here to help. That's all he wants." He took a deep breath and chanced a look at her, reaching out one hand to rest on her shoulder. She shivered, and then the hand was gone, even though she didn't want it to be. "He really cares about her, Lorelai. He shows it like hell, but he does."

That was the part that stung. She let one tear fall from the corner of her eye, no more. "I know," she whispered.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_Soda. Soda. Where's the damn soda?_

All he needed was a vending machine. He wasn't asking to walk on water or feed the five thousand, just to push some quarters through a slot and have a Coke spat at him. Where was the miracle in that? He was prowling the entire hellish fourth floor of New Haven Memorial Hospital, looking for anything that remotely resembled something to give him some caffeine, and there was nothing.

_Great._

He was unwilling to return to the waiting room right away, now that Lorelai had arrived. It sounded kind of like a statement from Apollo: _Lorelai has arrived._ She had ignored him when she'd first flown into the room, crushing Rory to her like some limp sock puppet. Somehow, she'd also managed to ignore that her daughter was in his clothes. He, and his things, had become invisible, a backdrop, unnoticeable. Not that he expected it to be any other way, really. Luke had given him the you-better-get-out-of-here-for-a-minute-while-you-still-have-use-of-your-legs look, one he was quite familiar with, and now here he was. By the janitor's corridor in the remotest hallway inside the north wing.

Rory, Rory, Rory . . .

God, everything was going to hell.

He didn't know what to do. Not knowing what to do usually didn't stop him. Matter of fact, it _never_ stopped him, but now –

Whatever shard of acceptance, whatever small sliver of tolerance, that had been working its way through his skin was freaking gone. He was back to the beginning. No, he was even before the beginning, down and down and down, being buried in an avalanche of broken dreams he'd thought he had lost but had really just hidden instead. They were back, throbbing even more viciously in their resurrection, causing him intense pain because he knew that _he couldn't do a damn thing about them._ Once this was over, once everything was back to normal, he would be the figurative raisin in her salad. He didn't belong there. He had to leave well enough alone.

Strange how things he said often came back to kick his ass like that.

She was lost, she was alone, she was afraid, and he stayed by her to ease all of these emotions. But in the end what always happened would inevitably happen. It was purely reason, like Marx or Tolstoy. Fate. There was nothing else to it. His burning hunger would betray him somehow, hurt her as he tried to tame it, and she would leave him standing on the doorstep of her dorm. Perfection. They had the motions down to an art. He could almost predict what words she would use.

Just when he was about to suffocate the next little old man in a blue uniform with a mop that walked by him, he saw a glowing vending machine up ahead. _Finally._ He ransacked his pockets, and after coming up with only a ten dollar bill and one nickel he carefully checked the hallway, saw it was empty, and slipped his wrist up the dispenser. With a quick flick and a jab from his knee, a Coca-Cola rolled down into his waiting hand. Yes, he was stealing from a hospital. Call it revenge for tax dollars. That was it.

He cracked the top, drank a little, and pulled out a cigarette he'd snatched from his jacket while Rory wasn't looking. Damn the not-smoking-in-a-hospital rule. If they didn't want anything more dangerous, say hostages, he was going to have to light one up. Again seeing that no one was coming, he discreetly pulled a lighter out of his pocket and took a drag like a dying man.

That was better. Okay.

He had his eyes closed but instantly snapped them open. The darkness automatically produced a picture of a ghostlike Rory shimmering beside Lane's pale body, which he didn't think he could handle right now. At least not without a few more cigarettes.

He should be heading back soon. Like now.

Taking another swig from the Coke, he began to silently and broodingly venture back the way he had come.

_"With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lane was being moved to Hartford at two o'clock that afternoon. Since she'd woken up a little bit before noon, she was stable enough to be moved to a better facility that was closer to her home. That was what the nurse told Mrs. Kim, who immediately fell into a bout of praying with Lorelai watching, a warmth spreading back through her cold limbs. She turned around to allow Mrs. Kim to rejoice without an audience.

Healing. The word that she'd always used so friviously seemed almost sacred now.

She saw him leaning against the wall out in the hallway, engrossed in a book, and she watched him for a moment. _Stay still_, she told herself, seeing his fingers absent-mindedly turning a page, the sleeves of his button-down shirt rolled up past his elbows, his free hand carelessly tangling in his hair. Rory was sitting in a chair beside her in the waiting room, half-asleep with silent tears of relief trembling on her eyelashes. She turned to look at her daughter, lost in sweatpants that were too big for her, hidden in the folds of a band T-shirt. She glanced back at Jess.

_Calm down._

Rory's eyes were also fixed on the scowling face outside the door, but they held an emotion which was much different than that of her mother's. The depth, the rawness, the boundless gratitude, all of which were plainly visible in crystal clear blue orbs, terrified Lorelai, as if she were standing on the edge of an abyss with one foot dangling into the darkness.

She fought the urge half a second longer, and then restraint became pointless.

Jess didn't even look surprised when she briskly walked out to where he was and motioned for him to follow her, all without breaking her stride. She wondered if he'd do as she asked, but when she turned a corner and waited he was coming slowly behind her. Eventually, he stood in front of her, book and all. She tried to search him in that second, tried to find the light of something or another that Rory saw in him, but his stare on her was merciless, mocking, daring. Maybe she just wasn't looking hard enough, or maybe her emotions were getting the better of her, but she couldn't see it.

"Yes?" He asked, his eyebrow raised. She wondered if he, too, had been dreading this conversation. She couldn't tell. He was unreadable, unknowable, unmovable.

Her mind instantly conjured the image of Lane lying in a hospital bed. The thought of Rory being in her place made Lorelai's throat constrict to the point where she wasn't sure if she would be able to make any noise. She couldn't afford to look weak. Not now. Not to him.

"Look. Lane's being brought to Hartford. That's where her mother wants her," she said bluntly, arms crossed. She tried to glare him down, but he didn't blink and he won. _What is he doing here?_ It was a question she'd been silently asking over and over and _over_ again through the last few hours. She refused to demand the answer from him, mostly because she was afraid of it. She was afraid of what it meant for Rory.

He nodded. She was surprised to find nothing sarcastic in his face anymore. Just a simple nod as he put his book in his back pocket and glanced back up at her, letting her know she had his attention. It reminded her of the one time they had held in almost normal conversation, something about Chinese food and leaves in gutters. The memory blew away as ones that made her angrier took its place.

"You're here," she stated, and she was still not asking, merely confirming. He said nothing, which irritated her. She saw Mrs. Kim signing release forms. Her heart viciously twisted for a second as she remembered Lane standing in her kitchen at age twelve, listening to forbidden music and curling her hair by the toaster oven. She pulled herself back into the present. "Rory . . ." This was going to be hard for her to say. Dammit. It needed to be said. "You were here for Rory. Earlier," she murmured, but what she really meant was _you were here before I was._ He still remained silent. Frustrated, she pressed her lips together and fixed him with righteously indignant eyes, noticing how bitterness and defiance returned her stare, but not the anger she'd expected. Obviously, she was going to have to be clear. He knew what she was trying to say, but he wasn't going to make it easy. "You. Cannot. Disappear. Now."

"Why?" Ah, yes, he definitely wasn't going to make this easy.

"She's . . . she's . . ." Defeated and knowing that he understood this, she glared at the floor. "She doesn't want you to. And you," she added heatedly, turning back to him with a start, only to find him looking at her coolly, "You are not going to . . . you aren't going to do to her what you always do to her. Not this time. Not with her like this. Do you understand me?"

She expected a smart ass remark, but she didn't get one. A scornful grin half-crossed his face. "Jeez." She opened her mouth to retort to him, to say that if he wasn't taking this seriously she was going to cut him apart and fillet him until kingdom come, but he cut her off. "I _want_ to be here for her. For Rory. Just like you. Okay?"

_He's heartless. It's impossible for him to be on your side._

_. . . . Isn't it?_

She didn't know what to say. The fight she had prepared herself for, the one that was so imminent on the horizon, was suddenly gone. She didn't know how to feel about that. A part of her that had been comfortably sunk deep into ignorance shifted unpleasantly.

He stared at her boldly for a few silent seconds, and then moved to turn around, apparently to go to Rory. "Wait!" She whispered furiously, finding her voice again. He stopped midstep and turned back, the I-don't-give-a-damn look back on his face again. But it was different now. It was different because she had seen what his face looked like without it. He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"I know . . . I know you can't stay very long," she muttered begrudgingly, tapping her foot on the floor with nervousness. She didn't like the way he could be so calm all the time. It threw her off. He nodded in mock confusion and then moved to turn back around, but she cleared her throat and he waited. "Just . . . tell her before you go?"

She hadn't meant to make it sound like a question. Not that he would have listened any better if she had ordered him to, but it made her sound weaker. She hated that.

He sighed heavily and licked his upper lip in contemplation, peering past her to where her daughter was sitting in the waiting room. He hadn't changed very much, she realized. He still looked like the same bad ass rebel he always had been. But she sensed something deeper, rawer, and more vulnerable underneath his thick hide than she'd been able to see before, something that became very clear when his eyes fell on Rory and softened.

She inhaled deeply.

"It'll be okay," was all he said. He promised nothing. He offered nothing. He added nothing. She stood there in disbelief, watching him walk coolly back across the hallway and through the door into the waiting room. He sat down next to Rory, and the look she gave him when he did so said quite plainly that she thought he was a god directly from Mount Olympus. She told him about Lane, half-laughing, half-crying, and he took her in his arms for a moment, jacket, tissue box, and all. For a second, his guard was down, and he looked . . . gentle.

Lorelai leaned weakly against the wall. _We're all in for one hell of a ride._


	18. Chapter 18

**Author's Note: **Okay, a little more happens in this chapter, but the next chapter is where the Rory/Jess interaction thickens. Umm . . . this is kind of long, language gets a little strong, and I hope you like it. As always, thank you for reviewing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The news had to be given in person. If that hadn't been a painfully obvious truth, there was no way Lorelai would be standing in the Gilmore's sitting room, letting her father mix her a drink. She had practiced billions of ways to say what she had to say, and none seemed quite sufficient. Her keys felt cold and heavy in her jacket, burning through the pocket until she could feel them against her side. She wanted to leave. This was probably going to turn ugly.

"So you're back early from Europe. To what do we owe this unexpected visit, Lorelai?" Richard asked pleasantly, handing her a wine glass filled with a sickeningly sweet martini and taking a seat in his typical chair. She took a sip and felt it bubble on her tongue, heavy and unusually strong. Or maybe that was just her anxiety talking.

It was a little after eight o'clock. Dinner had already been finished. That was the way things worked in this household; they were structured, perfect, catered to everyone's schedule. They were preplanned. What she was about to share definitely wasn't preplanned.

"Yes, Lorelai, please tell us why you decided to grace us with your presence." Emily was shrewder than her husband, and Lorelai shot her a piercing glare. She hated how her mother sat there with her ankles crossed, hands folded neatly in her lap, not a single hair out of place, and yet still stabbed her with poisonous barbs whenever she had the opportunity. But that didn't matter tonight.

"Mom, Dad. Um . . ." She wished she had notecards, or maybe a powerpoint presentation. Her mind automatically registered the quickest way to exit the house: through the door that led to the backyard. She knew how petty she was being, but her experience taught her that sometimes knowing the nearest exit turned out to be a saving grace. "I'm here to tell you," she continued, moving her hands nervously, "Rory didn't show up for dinner last night."

Emily smiled a fake smile. "Oh, Richard, _that's_ why that corner seemed so particularly quiet. Did you hear that? Rory didn't show up for Friday night dinner." With immense self control, Lorelai focused every fiber of her body into focusing on the ornate floral pattern etched into the carpet, watching how each petal faded into another, how vines twisted underneath her feet. Fidel Castro was at work again, but she wouldn't let it get to her. Not now.

"Ah, yes," Richard added, just as mockingly. "I'm glad that she pointed it out to us." He sank back into the plush upholstery of his chair, his lips upturned tolerantly. The car keys were presenting even more of a temptation, like a joint must have felt to Willie Nelson. But no.

"I'm sorry I didn't get an opportunity to tell you earlier," she said as smoothly as she could, and strangely, she found herself trying to act how Jess would act. That was demented and she knew it. She wanted to hit herself over the head multiple times. But somehow, his detachedness was something that she coveted at the moment.

_Now that's just insane._

No. She could do this on her own. They looked at her expectantly.

"There was . . . Rory was in a . . . an accident." Before anyone could say anything, she found herself rushing forward, as if maybe she could meet the blows with lightning words of her own. "I don't know exactly how it happened, I haven't asked, but Rory was driving and there was an accident. She's okay. She's fine. Her car is totaled, but she only got a couple of scratches. Her best friend, Lane – you remember Lane, right? – was a little bit more beat up. She had surgery today, but it looks like she's going to recover and be back to normal before we know it." She tried to think of something else to say, but there was nothing, so she felt for her keys in her pocket and readied herself for the oncoming assault.

There was a shocked silence for several long moments. It was Emily who recovered her voice first, as usual. Lorelai examined the silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece with newfound interest. "Rory was in an _accident_? Why did you wait to tell us until now?" There was a moment in which she did a calculation, and then her entire face seemed to melt. "You waited _twenty-four hours._"

"Weren't you in Europe?" Her father asked emptily, tiredly. She didn't say anything.

"Oh my _God_! You _were_ in Europe!" Emily exclaimed. The room seemed to spin. Lorelai's margarita suddenly tasted like poison against her tongue, and she set it down on the nearest table, tears starting to form in her eyes. "You came all the way back from France before you told us! Who was with her?"

"Luke, mom," she whispered. The paintings on the walls seemed oppressive. Even the air she was breathing seemed oppressive.

"God! You left that . . . that . . . _hooligan_ with her and didn't even tell her own grandparents? Your _parents_?"

What Lorelai hated more than the yelling was her father's silence. It was cold. It made her feel as if they weren't even related. It was what had given her nightmares when she was a little girl. "I was a little busy," she bit back, losing her patience now, wondering why she'd even come here in the first place.

Richard finally spoke, but when he did, he refused to meet her eyes. "Why isn't Rory here with you now?"

"She's sleeping," she said helplessly, realizing for the first time just how close Rory had gotten with her grandfather, and how it was breaking him not to be able to see her, to know with his eyes that she was okay. "I left her at home so she could rest. She's been awake for hours."

He nodded and rested his face in his hand, massaging his forehead. She knew he would not speak to her again before she left, and by the livid look on her mother's face, there was nothing else that she could say to make anything any better. Her task was completed to the best of its ability.

"Why didn't you at least have the damn _hospital_ call us? How can you just come waltzing in here like –"

She swallowed heavily and took her keys out of her pocket. "Goodnight, Mom. I'll be sure to tell Rory you're thinking of her." The betrayal in the room was palpable, mixing with oxygen and entering her lungs. She turned and left without glancing back once at her parents' torn faces.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jess was watching a crowd of Koreans with interest through the diner window as he wiped down a table. It was a very boring preoccupation, wiping down tables, an endless pattern of the same sweeping circular motion, spraying hamburger bun crumbs and French fry shards onto the floor. His attention span was nada during such an activity.

Apparently, Lane's family had come in from wherever they lived. A lot of cousins from the look of it. They were all crowded on the Kim's front porch, their outline silhouetted by the flickering porch light. He saw one tall head of blonde intermingled with all the shorter, sleeker heads of black and smirked at the way Zach looked as if he was being lectured on calculus. It seemed that the Kims were speaking Korean and he couldn't understand a word of it. Eventually, he threw up his hands in annoyance and climbed into a running car with Brian behind the wheel. They took off, presumably to the hospital.

The next task was even more tedious: refilling the salt shakers. He wondered what Luke had been poisoned with to want to do this for a living. Maybe there was radiation emitting from an unknown source behind the fifty-year-old filing cabinet in back. It was more possible than it sounded.

_This is temporary. Just until Luke shifts the work schedule around tomorrow to cover Lane's hours. You can leave in two days._

When the door opened, his gut wrenched even though he knew it wouldn't be her. And it wasn't.

Liz sauntered in, hair pulled back, wearing a red sweater and a pair of jeans. His sarcastic mood suddenly fled and he looked down at the counter, silent, pensive, as she saw him standing there. She looked different than she ever had when he was a kid; she looked softer, somehow, happier, almost motherly. But only almost, because his past still scarred him and made him see her in a light that wasn't the same as what everyone else saw her in. Not even her brother had the experiences with her he had. Wasn't he a lucky, _lucky_ man.

"Jessie!" She exclaimed, throwing up her arms in her overdramatic way. Jess remembered when she would go days without saying his name, without even looking at him. He couldn't keep holding this against her. It wasn't fair. He, of all people, knew how important it was for someone to be able to start off on a clean slate, to let the past stay in the past. He couldn't be a hypocrite. It just wasn't in his system.

Looking up from the salt shakers, he pressed his lips together and spread his hands out on the countertop as she leaned over it and hugged him. He tried to hug her back, he really did. It was a pathetic hug. "What are you doing here? Why didn't you call and say you were coming? How long are you in town for?"

He'd never been really good at talking to her. Uncomfortably, he stepped back a little, hands in his pockets now. He really didn't want to explain the past day's events to his mother. In his mind, he could already see where the conversation was going to go, and it was nowhere particularly good.

"Luke just needed some –"

"Hey, big brother!" Liz cut him off as Luke stepped through the curtain from his apartment. Jess breathed a sigh of relief and refocused on the salt shakers that, although they had been boring minutes before, were now like a lifeline to him. They were beautiful salt shakers. "I've been looking for you all day. Where've you been?"

Luke looked tired. He had to be tired. His expression said that the pitch of his sister's tone was irritating him. _Let me back you up there, buddy._ "I've been gone."

"Where?"

Jess' radar suddenly went on alert. "He had a shipment to pick up in Philly," he lied smoothly, effortlessly. There was almost no thought behind it, which was somewhat sad. "And, as usual, he had to stop by my place and drag me down here to help him cover for some patchy work hour scheduling." The begrudging acquiesce in his voice, the way his tongue seemed to drip with cynicism, and how he rolled his eyes seemed to fool Luke, too, for a second, as if he was trying to remembering picking up a shipment in Philadelphia. Jess felt the long, low glare shot in his direction.

"It's so great of my boy to help out," Liz said proudly, smiling, reaching up a hand to ruffle his hair. He cringed on the inside, not out of hate or even dislike, but more out of fear. He didn't like to admit it. His face remained impassive. "Luke, what I wanted to ask ya was, can TJ and I borrow a crockpot?"

_You live with one_, Jess wanted to say. The temptation was almost too heavy to resist, but he was still locked in a staring contest with his uncle. Luke broke away to look at Liz.

"You're kidding. You've been waiting a whole day to ask me about a crockpot?" He, too, appeared to be struggling with sarcasm.

"Oh, you know," she explained, gesturing with her hands vaguely. "We wanna cook some stew before summer comes." Jess was willing to bet his car, his watch, and ten books, including his first-edition copy of _For Whom the Bell Tolls_, that his mother did not want the crockpot for stew. Luke, however, was too naïve.

"O_kay _. . . Let me go get one . . ."

He disappeared momentarily. Jess noticed that the crowd on the Kim's porch had dispersed. The light was still on, but the bulb appeared to be in the process of burning out. He finished the salt shakers, and desperately cast around for something to keep him busy, but not soon enough.

"You look so handsome," Liz suddenly stated happily, and reached out a finger to touch his chin. "Little bits of stubble. You're a grown man."

He smiled tolerantly, wondering what he had been when she'd left him alone for nights at a time in their apartment, allowing him to think she'd been picked up by the police or jumped or killed.

"Here you go," Luke said, striding back into the room with a crockpot and depositing it in her arms. Jess managed to fade into the background as she thanked her brother flamboyantly, profusely, and a little profanely, answered a few more questions, and left. She didn't say goodbye. He was that good at being invisible. Or maybe she was just that good at ignoring him.

_God. Get off the pity chain gang, asshole._

The moment she was gone, Luke crossed his arms forebodingly and turned away from the window. The night air smelled like wet grass and fireflies, a summery smell, even though it was still spring. It made him remember a lot of things, mostly long forgotten, some of which hurt and some of which were so painfully beautiful that they made his hands shake. That summer scent had always smelled like her.

"What was that about?" Luke asked coarsely, shocking Jess out of his reverie. He instantly retreated back into an expressionless front, knowing full well that after all this time it still worked. It was his defense, his gift, his talent, the one thing God had given him that he actually had going for him.

"I believe a crockpot," he answered innocently, wiping his hands on his jeans and folding up a towel that lay next to him. Crockpot, he thought to himself, sounded like the word 'crackpot,' which was simply a mix of two street names for two different types of drugs. He wondered what genius had come up with that. What would be next? Boozekeg? Creative.

"Jess."

About now was where the teenage Jess would have said, "Oh. _Scary_ voice." Instead, he cocked an eyebrow and remained silent. He had learned a little over the last couple of years. He had learned to stop pushing people away so hard, because every once and awhile, you wanted them. He wouldn't admit that he _needed_ them, not yet. Luke was someone he had settled his debt with. He was a friend more than a relative.

"Jess, come on. Why did you say that . . . crap? A run to Philadelphia? I never _run_ to Philadelphia. I hate Philadelphia. I run _away_ from Philadelphia."

"Liz doesn't know that," he argued. Jess realized that Luke was still wearing the hat Lorelai had bought him years ago. He wished he knew what had happened between them before this whole thing with the car accident, because something surely had; Jess was not stupid. No, actually, he didn't want to know.

"Well she's gonna hear about it eventually, I mean, jeez, this is Stars Hollow. The whole town knows what boxers Kirk is wearing."

"Could that possibly be because he sleepwalks when he's nearly _au natural_?" He tried to slip up the stairs, but a hand on his shoulder stopped them. He shook it off.

"She's gonna hear about Rory. She'll put two and two together."

Jess closed his eyes for a second at the sound of her name, at the memory of her broken expression and the blood on her sweater, at the distant feeling of her body shaking against his when she cried. By the time he looked up again, the brown of his irises had been swallowed up by black.

"She doesn't know how to put two and two together anymore than she needs a crockpot for damn stew. And if she does somehow get four, I don't care. I'll be gone." His words hadn't been that harsh to Luke in a long time. They shocked his uncle and made the air heavy the second they left his mouth, but he wasn't sorry. He was angry. He was angry at how hopeless he was, at how pathetic he seemed, at how he was willing to drop his whole life at the smallest movement from Rory towards his general direction. He hadn't seen her since the hospital this morning, she was pulling back again, and he was left in the same position as always.

It made him sick with shame.

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The next morning, the hospital was slow. It really was a fine hospital, with some of the best doctors on the East Coast. That's what everyone said. Rory glanced out the sixth floor window as she arranged flowers in a flower vase, looking at how businesses and restaurants and hotels unfurled for blocks until the edge of the city rose in the distance.

"I'm glad you bought daffodils," Lane said, her voice thin and papery, like the onion leaf pages of her Bible. But it was still her voice. "Yellow ones."

Rory smiled and pulled a small piece of dirt off a delicate golden petal. "Would you believe that the florist tried to sell me bleeding hearts?"

"That's . . . poetic."

"It's something. Then again, I asked her how much I owed her and she told me Kennedy was crazy for launching that space program." She wiped her hands on her jeans and flipped a wave of hair over her shoulder before crossing the small but bright room to sit in a chair by Lane's bedside. It was her new resolution not to dwell on Lane's sunken cheeks or glassy eyes anymore, not to worry about how pale she was or how dry her lips were. It was necessary to close her ears to the raspy noise Lane made when she breathed, due to the oxygen tube up her nose. She'd been trying to ignore this with such a passion over the last few hours that it hurt.

"Yeah. That Sputnik thing is crazy," Lane murmured, leaning back into the pillow. Her movements were still heavily restricted, but morphine kept the pain at a minimum. She glanced at the way the sun was playing on the daffodils. "Did you bring those CDs?"

"Sure did," Rory answered, pulling a whole CD case out of the backpack she'd brought and flipping through each vinyl page. "Per request, I left out Cream. We won't even mention my mother's little guilty pleasure I found in here . . . Simon & Garfunkel," she whispered. And then, more normally, "Don't worry, it's gone. A little hot and heavy English punk with some Pink Floyd – you know, _Far Side of the Moon_ – and I snagged Gypsy's rock album from the counter in her mechanic shop when she wasn't looking."

There was a long pause. Rory tried not to focus on the machines that were still hooked up to Lane. Every beep and every bell made her skin crawl. She tried not to dwell on the criss-crossing patterns of cuts on Lane's forehead.

"I'm going home in a week," Lane finally whispered deliciously, savoring the idea. A line of pictures of herself and Zach, shot a few months ago in one of those cheesy photo booths in the mall, was taped to the headboard of her bed. She shifted as much as she could to look at it.

"Your mom wants you to stay with her," Rory said as softly as she could. She remembered the look on Mrs. Kim's face, the loss, the confusion. It was strange how much it affected her. These past few days had been the first time in her entire life that Rory had ever seen anything even slightly resembling tenderness from Lane's mother, and it both scared her and saddened her.

Lane shook her head and didn't say anything. Rory understood.

"I can't stay very long. I have to get the bus back." She smiled when she saw how the insanely bad "We Miss You" card that she had drawn and gotten all of Stars Hollow to sign early this morning was on the table by the bed. Stick figures encompassed the end of her drawing abilities.

She had dropped by the diner, and tentatively held out the card to him, but Jess wouldn't sign it. That, he said, was where he drew the line. Their conversation, awkwardly and painfully, ended there.

_I can resist anything except temptation . . ._

He was an elixir to her, something that she drank greedily when he offered, a refuge from the storm she suddenly felt herself caught in, and yet he represented a cyclone all of his own. His being here had to mean something, didn't it? They had hardly spoken two sentences to each other since that night. He said nothing as they climbed into separate cars, nothing when they stopped at the hospital in Hartford, nothing when he drove away. It almost seemed like he wasn't real. Maybe he wasn't.

He was going to be gone soon. She knew that. She knew because she had seen the restless look in his eyes earlier that morning, the one she recognized like her own reflection, and she understood how strange it was for him to be here. She didn't _want_ it to feel strange for him to be here, she wanted it to be back to how it used to be, to when she could sit next to him and let the pounding in her heart drown out his words and just watch his lips move when he talked, watch the way his eyebrows lifted and his mouth twisted into his smirk.

Wow. That was quite a confession. Where had _that_ come from? How long had it been there?  
"Usually . . . I avoid Zach's cooking," Lane said weakly, her eyes half-closed and her fingers resting on her stomach as it rose and fell. "But after a week of hospital food . . . French toast and hot dogs doesn't sound . . . so bad."

Rory bit her lip and tried to escape the smoke that was filling the corridors of her brain. "As long as they aren't together." The half-hearted smile on her face fooled no one, least of all herself.

"That's how . . . Brian likes it. Together," Lane murmured happily, gently. She leaned back into the pillows, leaving Rory to watch each flutter of her eyelids as she fell asleep like a child, exhausted, weary, and beautiful.

It wasn't fair. It really wasn't. Guilt gnawed at her and the silent tears she was so prone to soaked into the fabric of her jeans.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The sun was setting, casting a fiery orange glow on the floor and staining the sky blood red in the west. Jess slipped out of the kitchen and watched her as she sat at a booth alone, staring into her coffee, her hair swept to one side of her shoulders. She was wearing a high collared T-shirt to hide her bruise, but her finger kept unconsciously finding its way to her lower neck. By now each of the roughly twenty residents of Stars Hollow had come up to her and "oh-I'm-so-glad-you-aren't-hurt"ed and "Lane's-going-to-be-fine-honey"ed, so she was left sad and solitary as night gathered. Her mother was nowhere to be found. Jess thought that Lorelai's avoiding of the diner probably didn't have anything to do with Rory.

He wanted to be mad at her. He really, really wanted to be mad at her. She didn't move to drink the coffee, just kept gazing at it as if she was trying to see the future on its surface instead of blobs of cream. All at once, her eyes darted up like she was looking for something. They roved the counter, the corner, the coffeepot. Then, just when she was about to look back down, she found him. He knew at once who it was she had been searching for: himself. That only made the coiling in him worse. He couldn't go on with this much longer, this pretending that she didn't matter to him like she used to.

_Do it. You promised to do it._

Damn her and her beautiful innocence, her broken eyes, her gorgeous smile. Damn her love for books, for his margin notes, for his sarcasm, but not for him, not anymore. Damn how she talked softly, damn her wit, damn her intelligence.

There was a moment in which she simply stared, and then he walked over to her without really looking at her, but instead glancing over at the door like he was going to bolt. When he finally stood beside her it felt too awkward, so he slumped in a chair from the table next to hers, his legs sprawled in that typically boyish way. She looked soft and warm and kind of the same.

"I dropped off your clothes," she murmured, half-blushing. It was strange how she seemed to feel responsible for making conversation when he was the one who had come to her in the first place. He wished they could find their comfortable silence again, their own rhythm that had somehow been lost in the beatings over the past few years. He was acutely uncomfortable. What was the reason he'd come back to frigging Connecticut again? A phone call would've been fine. He should have gone to the southwest. He'd never been to the southwest. There were no northeastern virginal princesses to haunt him there.

He swallowed heavily, rubbing his hands together. "I read _Anthem_," he confessed suddenly. The moment it was out of his mouth he wondered why the hell he'd said that. It hadn't even been on his mind. But somehow, the thing he really needed to say didn't sound like it should follow after she just told him she had dropped off his clothes.

She didn't look surprised at his randomness. She knew that it was one of his characteristics, having a mind that worked seamlessly on several different tracks at once. _There are so many, many things you don't know about me anymore._

"Now all Ayn and I demand out of you is _Atlas Shrugged_." The first real smile since the accident touched the corners of her lips, making her even more stunning. He had a plan for when her Noxema-like beauty started to get to him, when she looked like she should be in a magazine with puppies crawling all over her: avoid the eyes. Do anything to avoid the gut-tearing, painfully clear sky-blue eyes.

"You read that?"

Her face lit up like it always did when she was proud of herself. He wondered when the last time she had talked to someone about political literature outside of a classroom was. He wondered who she argued with, who she laughed with, who made her cry. He wondered but he did not ask.

"When I was fourteen," she answered, shyly, her eyes dropping to the table. He leaned back in his chair, relishing this return to the Rory he recognized, the one who wasn't steeped in designer clothes or dick boyfriends, the one whose very purity had attracted him so suddenly and harshly it hurt him.

"You should be knighted," he stated matter-of-factly, smirking. He felt some phantomlike remnant of the easiness they had enjoyed as teenagers. Was it because they were really, basically, at the simplest level, the same? Of course not. He looked at how she shone, even cloaked in sadness, at how her light was the complete opposite of his dark, at how she had the world at her feet and he was forced to scrape on the feet of the world. Bitterly, he remembered what she deserved and what he was.

But then he saw more than that, what he'd seen back when he was seventeen, and it made him pause.

She looked at him with complete seriousness. "There's only one problem with that."

He raised his eyebrows mockingly. "Which is?"

"I'm a girl." _Oh yes you are. You're a hell of a girl._

"Well, if it didn't stop Elton John . . ." He trailed off solemnly, and he felt that ancient warmth spread through him when she tried to stifle her laugh but couldn't. He watched her drink the coffee she hadn't been able to touch moments before, watched her throat when she swallowed.

It was in that second that he caught himself. It was happening all over.

_Dammit_.

_Jesus, Rory, you should come with a warning label._

It was a burning inside of him but worse than that, far, far worse than that, so subtle or maybe just so common to him now that he hadn't even recognized it at first.

He could deny it. He could. _I have had fucking nothing for as long as I can fucking remember, but the one thing, the only thing, I've ever been able to hold onto is my life. It's mine. It's the only damn thing I own._

It was not in the plan to fall for her again. Definitely not in the plan.

He'd been able to get by before. She was gone. He'd messed it up. He was forced to accept that.

But now it was back. This aching, acidic, scorching _thing_, stinging even more because he recognized that look in her eyes, the look that said she was thinking about him and it was good to her. _Don't you understand? I'm not good for you. I desecrate, I defile, I ruin, I blaspheme purity like yours. Don't you remember? God, it killed me to hurt you._

But what if . . .

He wondered if it were possible for him to touch her without burning her this time. Maybe his hands were different, cleaner. Maybe he was better now. Or maybe they were just the same, but he saw what he refused to see before: she was everything to him.

It hit him in a moment of Voltaire-like epiphany. What stood between them didn't matter. Hadn't it been there before, all those years back? It hadn't mattered then either; there was something stronger than the barriers. There was a fatal attraction, a doomed adoration, yes, but maybe the fatal and doomed parts were self-inflicted. Maybe there was something worth salvaging. He glanced up at her and understood he was looking at the only truly beautiful thing he'd ever held in his life.

"I'm leaving tomorrow morning," he said quite suddenly. It was blunt and hard, but it was out there. They both knew what he was really saying. _Tell me not to go. Tell me to stay. _He was reaching out, actually reaching out, and not out of pity or sympathy or even empathy, but want, need, and something harsher and deeper and undefined.

Her smile faded and he searched her eyes, for what he didn't know. He mercilessly ransacked her soul, trying to bring out that glimmer of what he'd seen, of what he'd recognized. He saw it for one second, two, as she took a deep breath and the world seemed to stand still.

For the first time since he was seven, he almost prayed. Then the moment was gone.

He knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. It was what he'd suspected all along. With a shaking of his head to silently tell her she didn't need to explain, his mouth turned up in a sadly bitter grin. All the unspoken words were stifling, all the things that had never been shared but were killing each of them in their loneliness, all the sizzling coals of an earlier fire that were aching to leap back to life again. There was a palpable taste, heavy with an apology, no, a thousand apologies. _I'm sorry for what we could have been. And now I will live my whole life without having you._

When he stood up, she made a small murmur of resistance and her hand involuntarily reached out, her fingers brushing against the sleeve of his camouflage shirt. The bitterness in his ironic smile softened and he slipped out of her grip. "You'll feel better soon."

Who knew to what he was referring? He didn't.

He waited a beat. She said nothing. He wished she would. He walked back into the kitchen, and when he came out again later he noticed she had left her mug of coffee without drinking another sip.

_"'The world,' he resumed after a short pause, 'has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge.'"_

_- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -_

Rory looked at her clock. It was nearly three in the morning.

She could not sleep. Her body was exhausted, but her mind was working at a hundred miles an hour. Disconnected, fragmentary things were her only company: shards of glass sprayed along blacktop, lights, red lights, and then emptiness. Total emptiness.

The wind blew among the branches of a tree in front of the house and threw long, waving shadows across her bed. She watched them thoughtlessly, enthralled by their dance, caught up in their insubstantiality.

She had not cried. She would not cry for him again. Not _again._

_You know what he is. You know what he's not. You know he can't be what you need._

She closed her eyes against waves of what-might-have-beens that were battering her body, invisibly bruising every inch of exposed skin, searing her whole system. It was at times like these, vulnerable times when she could do nothing else but bear the torrents of regret that poured over her, that her barest and rawest thoughts fought from the obliqueness of her brain.

_You have lived your whole life on the borders._

Her eyes opened suddenly. What?

_You have lived your whole life on the borders._

It was a disease she'd been afflicted with ever since she could remember. She took up whatever space people left for her, never demanding more, never saying no when a gap was made that she was asked to fill in. It was almost as if someone had turned her into a worshipper of other people's happiness and not her own, which was a beautiful thing in many cases but a self-destructive flaw in others. She did not push, she did not ask, she did not inquire. Rory stood quietly on the sidelines, substituting when called, no matter how much it hurt her.

_Be honest._

_It doesn't matter if it hurts, be honest._

_Be honest . . ._

_You never gave up on him. Not really._

She felt like she was dying. It was a sudden jolt of understanding. Her brain was burned with how he felt, how he smelled, how he tasted, what he knew, the way his lips moved when he talked, the tempestuous storm in his eyes. The dreams that left her in tears were not of murder or rape or arson, but of how he touched her, how he kissed her, how he broke her and left her to remember alone.

How long? God, how long?

The passion, the adventure, and the intellect he had brought to her back when she was a teenager had blown away with him. He'd deserted her and left her still wanting, burning with a fire he hadn't put out, needing but pretending it didn't exist. Some people tried to drown their memories in alcohol, but she used school. When that hadn't been enough, there was Logan.

So the truth was out. But the truth meant nothing if she didn't do anything with it.

She was so afraid. So terribly, terribly afraid. What did he do to her, to make her feel this? She was helpless, clay in his hands, and far too often that clay was snapped by those hands.

_"Call me?"_

_"Yeah, I'll call you."_

_"I think . . . I think I may have loved you, but I'll just have to get over that."_

_"We're supposed to be together! You know it! I know you know it!"_

No more. No more! The tears she had refused to shed dripped hot and thick down her cheeks. No more. How much longer could she be enslaved by her fear of her craving, of the deepest dependency she'd had on him since the second she'd seen that swirling, downpouring thing she needed so heavily?

She'd always been waiting for him. She knew that now. She had always been waiting for him to settle his soul, and for hers to open. But you can only wait so long before you see that waiting doesn't do much of anything at all.

_"Yes! you are the ruin--the ruin--the ruin--of me. I have no resources in myself, I have no confidence in myself, I have no government of myself when you are near me or in my thoughts. And you are always in my thoughts now. I have never been quit of you since I first saw you. Oh, that was a wretched day for me! That was a wretched, miserable day!"_


	19. Chapter 19

**Author's Note:** Sorry it took me so long to get it up! Sorry, sorry, sorry! I hope it was somewhat worth the wait . . .

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When Jess saw Rory standing by his car with her arms folded against the early morning cold, he didn't let on how shaken he was. It was almost like when you were standing near a butterfly, afraid to make too much noise lest it should float away. Not that he'd ever stood near a butterfly, but she seemed that delicate.

Without saying a word, he opened the door to the back of his car and tossed in his bag, just like he had so many other times. Then he shut it and stared at the ground.

Impatience. Disbelief. Anger. Skepticism. It was all the same to him. Maybe it was all the same to everyone. A streetlamp flickered above them.

He didn't know what she was there for. What more was there to explain? How many times must they rip open the same mortal wound? But he felt her resolve more than he saw it, he felt the firmness she had not showed him for so long, the stubbornness he once found so enticing. It was like the return of a seductress to the bedroom, but purer.

Soft lavender light washed the alleyway. He watched a strand of hair blow across her face in the light breeze.

"I want to go with you. To Philadelphia."

How could he explain the feelings that flooded through him? There was no way. No way in hell. It absolutely drowned him, so he didn't even try. His face did not change.

"Okay."

_So there _is_ no such thing as too damn late._

What was there to think about anymore? They had thought it out to the point where it was muddled, demented, abstract, and now he needed something real, something he could touch and feel and hold. He didn't know what else to say. There _was_ nothing else to say, no questions to ask, no statements to make. How unusual was this for them, really?

He opened the passenger door. It was a silent challenge; he might as well have been holding out the needle filled with heroin. He was surprised when she didn't hesitate, because it seemed like their whole relationship had been hesitation. She crossed behind the car and stood next to him for a second. "Lane has family here now, and I'll be back before –"  
He nodded as she fell silent, his heart pounding so hard that he thought the cardiac muscles were going to burst apart. He smelled her shampoo and, as ridiculous as it sounded, he even imagined he could smell the salt of her tears.

When he sat down beside her and turned over the engine, he was hit with the feeling that he was smuggling precious cargo out of Connecticut, almost like he was kidnapping her. But she looked at him with reassurance, like she had every day two years ago, and that look told him exactly what she thought. That was all that mattered.

He didn't know how long he was going to have her next to him for, or where this left them. To be completely honest, in that moment, he didn't give a damn.  
_" . . . it was the last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She was mesmerized by the dark tangles of his hair and his dark eyes, his dark outline and his dark profile. That's all he was to her: dark, dark, dark, dark everything, but beautiful in his darkness, almost brighter than light was. The way his hand was draped carelessly over the steering wheel and the other against the door was something she found sexy. She was afraid of how strong the physical attraction still was, just like it had always been. Never, not with any other man on the planet, had she felt such a strong and immediate physical attraction.

His body looked painfully foreign and yet recognizable to her. She remembered the carved out muscles of his arms and chest, the leanness, the resilience that growing up in the city had given him. A shadow of stubble around his chin completed the strongly featured handsomeness of his face. There was much, though, that she didn't know, much that she had never gotten the chance to learn, and she wondered what his skin felt like without layers of clothing between them.

She realized he probably knew she was staring at him and blushed a deep crimson, so deep that she looked away to the window to avoid having to suffer under his gaze. She had no idea what she was doing here, in his car. Her decision had been a random one, a spiteful one made in half just to overturn the idea that she couldn't do what she wanted. No, that wasn't true. The fact was that she couldn't bear to watch him leave again. Pieces of her broke off every time he did.

There were no words for several miles. What was there to say after what they had just experienced? It was the beginning of the inevitable caving in, the distant appearance of something on the horizon that had been scripted for them since perhaps the first day they had seen each other. Or maybe it wasn't. In the way that things always worked out, this could amount to nothing at all. This could just be a deeper dagger in already festering skin.

But it felt different this time.

Finally, when the silence became too oppressive and made her hungry want rise up too sharply within her, she cleared her throat. "Jess?"

He glanced over at her momentarily.

"Is it . . . is it okay for me to show up with you? At the publishing house? Just like this?"

His coffee-colored eyes were lit with amusement, in the way that made her feel warm, scared, and excited all at once. She marveled at how he had changed but hadn't, at how he was still so calm and smooth and still. The long black strip of road flashed past them, shadowed by dawn, feeling like some kind of misty dream that she had held only in sleep but now recognized in the manifestation.

He didn't take his eyes off the road. "They'll probably have the feathers laid out and the tar boiling."

She chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying not to laugh, because she knew how pleased he would be with himself that he made her laugh. "_Jess_." There was exasperation, maybe, but also a heartwrenchingly childlike relief that mixed with her blood to flow through her veins.

This time he did grin, and she knew that he knew he'd won anyway. "What do you think you need to get in? A country club card?"

"No," she said defensively, crossing her arms. "I didn't know if they'd want random people around all your manuscripts and –"

"Oh yeah. It's like _Windtalkers_. If we're attacked by the next publishing house down and you've read a manuscript, we'll have to kill you before you fall into enemy hands." He checked his rearview mirror, completely undisturbed. The harmony of blacktop, sunlight, and sky accepted him like he was part of it, melding seamlessly in the blue of morning. She was infatuated again, dangerously obsessed. Even the imminent threat of probable brokenness could not dissuade her, and she vaguely asked herself why she had not come before to this beautiful chaos.

There was another period of silence, but this one was more comfortable. "I'm sorry . . . for the suddenness." Shyly, she glanced down at her seatbelt that was tucked around her waist. The shoulder strap skirted near her bruise. She tried to hide it.

He shrugged nonchalantly, but the intensity with which his gaze bored through her skin made her shiver. "Carpe diem, baby," he quoted. Those words struck something within her to the place that vibrated her bone marrow. She felt needles in her spine and inhaled sharply.

_Why did you come to see me?_ She started to ask that question a hundred times, but it never pushed through.

She was a little afraid of what was about to happen. He was going to admit her into a life that he shared with no one, his own personal existence he'd made for himself over the past couple of years, and the independent success she was almost painfully proud of him for. She'd always known he had potential. It simmered in the air around him, lurked in his haunted face, in his grin. Yes, he tried to hide it, but the way he challenged her had only served to drive her forward, to pull her more relentlessly toward him, and she feared that history would repeat itself now.

"Your car is the same," Rory remarked offhandedly, delicately fingering the ripped fabric of her seat. Jess pressed his lips together, remembering in the slow, lazy way of contentment all the other times she had sat there, laughing, talking, singing to music he screamed over the speakers. Before Luke had taken away his car, which seemed almost comedic now, they kissed right here, in the heavy and powerful way they did those things. No one had ever stirred a kiss out of him like she could. He let himself grin, trying to edge away the longing and lose himself in the memory.

"No junkyard is worthy of this car," he explained. He tried not to glance at her again, but he couldn't help it. He was afraid she would suddenly disappear like the dew that was burning off the grass. The traffic was rush hour heavy, so he was driving slowly, but for once it didn't matter to him.

"It needs a name."

This time he shook his head firmly. "You are _not_ naming my car." He had forgotten some of her many peculiarities.

"Yes. Jess, you've had it for years. It needs a name."

"Who the hell names a damn car?" He drummed his fingers idly on the steering wheel, hit by a suddenly craving for a cigarette, noticing how she tried to hide her combination of a blush and a smile when he swore.

"Batman does."

"Do I look like I'm about to don a cape to you?" He let the rhetoric question hang for a second before backing up hurriedly. "Stop imagining me in a cape."

She smiled at him, showing her white teeth and the soft curve of her lips. His eyes began to travel lower until they reached the gentle swell in her shirt, and then he inwardly cursed at himself and jerked his gaze back to the road.

In the past, he hadn't been very careful with girls. They never asked him to be. They were used to what he was used to, which wasn't much. Meaningless sex was not only normal, it was kind of required. The old thought he'd often struggled with now resurfaced in his mind: if she were any other woman, quite honestly any other woman in the whole goddamn continental United States of America, he wouldn't hesitate to do what he'd always done.

But maybe that wasn't true. At least not anymore, anyway.

"Capes don't work for you," she finally said, completely unaware of the battle he'd been fighting. But then again, her naïveté had always been refreshing to him. It was almost sad, in a way, that she couldn't tell how much he still wanted her. "You're one Harley short of Marlon Brando." He nodded in agreement, albeit mockingly. She thought for a second, and then cleared her throat with an air of importance. "We'll call him Stanley."

"Jeez, not _A Streetcar Named Desire._"

"That's Brando's best movie! Would you rather take an extremely literal interpretation, and actually call him 'Desire?'"

"I'd rather remember this is a _car _and the only name it gets is whatever cuss word I throw at it when it breaks down. Stop calling it 'him.'"

She got the higher-than-thou look she was prone to without knowing it, the one that said she was supremely irritated. He was glad he could still work it out of her. "It obviously can't be a girl," she said with a tone that suggested she was explaining thermodynamics to a five-year-old. "That would just be weird. Improper."

"All cars are called 'shes.' And ships, too."

"This thing goes with you _everywhere_, and it's a mess! It's too creepy to call it a girl."

"That's not fair. It is _not_ a mess."

Pointedly, she lifted the peeling plastic vinyl right off of the dashboard so he could see the bare metal underneath. "A mess," she repeated. There was a pause, and then she added quietly, "But I like it anyway."

He smirked and let the issue drop.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Her bare feet were resting on the dashboard, the burgundy of her toenail polish contrasting sharply with the paleness of her skin. He watched as the nine o'clock sun illuminated some of the golden freckles on her nose and brought out the strands of honey in her hair. He thought of the word exquisite, and shook his head.

"Okay . . ." She trailed off, dragging her fingers along the edge of her seat. "_Of Human Bondage._"

"_Cakes and Ale._"

"Did Maugham write that?"

"Of course he did. Who else would name a book _Cakes and Ale_?" He asked, feeling the steady vibration of the engine beneath them. Temptation pulled at him as he stared ahead, watching each green sign flash by. Philadelphia be damned. There was Chicago, New York, San Antonio, L.A., Vegas, Phoenix . . .

But he'd already offered her that, once. That was not what she needed, not now. Not yet.

After a moment of contemplation, she nodded. "Fine, so he wrote _Cakes and Ale._ I don't know if I've read that one –"

"You can't remember if you've read it or not?"

She maturely chose not to dignify that with a response. "– but at least you didn't say something completely cliché, like _Creatures of Circumstance_."

"Well, there's hope for me yet," he said dryly. He felt another twinge in his lungs, and remembered he hadn't smoked all morning. With one connected, almost invisible motion, he freed a carton from the pocket of his leather jacket and slipped a smooth cigarette out of the top, rolling it between his fingers.

After a moment, he felt her watching him. Her eyes glittered like they always did when she knew something that someone else didn't, or she wanted to say something some else didn't want to hear, but she was too nice. It was scary how much he remembered about her.

Deliberately, he pulled out a lighter. It was more than she could take, just as he'd known it would be. "You aren't going to smoke that," she said firmly. There weren't many people she was comfortable enough around to be firm with. He knew that.

"Yeah, I am," he answered carelessly, giving her a crooked grin that half said to her he was amused and half said to her he didn't give a damn.

"But smoking is –"

"As bad for you as coffee addiction. There just aren't any patches for coffee yet." It wasn't like he wasn't used to getting his daily ration of 'you're-killing-yourself-with-cancer-sticks' lecturing, and even from her it didn't disturb him anymore. She didn't mind as much as she said she did. He could tell.

"That's not the same thing. Don't even try to make it sound like the same thing," she argued. She was annoyed by how, somewhere in a deep, honest part of her, she found the rebellious cigarette smoking partially alluring. It fit him; it was part of him, like night. Still, she didn't like the statistics on smokers. He shrugged, a quick jab of the shoulders that was never a yes or a no, and it irritated her. "You can't smoke it in the car. It'll smell awful."

Part of her smiled when she saw how he hesitated to strike the lighter. She made him hesitate. Not many people could do that. "Jesus. Do you want the whining medal for today?"

"A trophy, please. As big as Kirk's."

"I don't think you deserve a trophy."

"And I'm _hungry_. There. Do I deserve a trophy now?"

He sighed and ran the hand with the cigarette in it through his hair. "A damn Pulitzer Prize," he grumbled. She was pushing and he was giving. Reluctantly, of course, but giving. It was déjà vu in its finest form. "We'll be to the publishing house in an hour. Can't you wait that long?"

She looked pointedly at the cigarette that he still held between his long fingers. "Can't you?"

"Rory –"

"If I don't eat, you don't smoke," she stated matter-of-factly, crossing her arms in a distinctly Rory-like way that made him smirk. He worked to hide it. Now he really needed that cigarette.

After a moment of silence, he glanced over at her and then back at the road. "Where's the next exit?"

_". . . he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was--a woman."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She was ravenous. Not that she wasn't usually ravenous, but this kind of ravenous defeated all previous concepts of ravenous. They had stopped at a little run down diner that looked like it had been dropped somewhere around the time _The Twilight Zone _aired and then left to rot. It was nothing like Luke's, but at the same time it was kind of like Luke's, in that not-too-familiar familiarity that was comforting.

He blew a waft of smoke and watched her pack away a huge, greasy omelet into her tiny, petite body. Vaguely, he wondered if her stomach came with a collapsible add-on for the hell she put it through. It was endearing, though. He hated to admit it, but it was.

"So, is it 'Mm, mm, good?'" He asked when she finally took a breath to work on her coffee.

She looked at him with doe-eyes, the kind that made his heart stumble just a little bit. "Oh, you know. 'Once you pop, the fun doesn't stop."

"I think it's 'once you pop, the fun don't stop.'"

She blushed. "I know, but –"

A look of understanding dawned on his face. "No way, Gilmore."

"What?"  
"Are you telling me that you can't stand to be grammatically incorrect, even when you're quoting the damn Pringles slogan?"

She fell quiet and turned back to her coffee while he shook his head in disbelief. From the corner of her eye, she watched him take a long, painfully slow drag on his cigarette and exhale the smoke away from her. His hair was messed up in his typical just-got-out-of-bed way, and his eyes were penetrating. She wanted to touch him.

"I think I have a meeting this morning with some guy," he finally muttered, trying the different topic tactic. It usually worked if he could get her going on a rant.

"'Some guy?' And you 'think' you have a meeting with him?" she chided gently. Success.

"Well, I'm not exactly running Microsoft here." He wasn't very hungry. She had insisted that he order something, and still not able to say no to her without suffering a very disgusting taste in his mouth, he had. Of course, he'd acted like it was what he wanted, like it was all his idea, but he did it for her. He was sitting on this cracked plastic booth, staring down into some runny pile that resembled pancakes, for her. Blueberry ones. The blueberries could go to hell.

"No, you're not," she said softly, and the look in her eyes was gentle. He cleared his throat.

"I'll show you around, and then maybe you can . . . Jeez, I would've moved stuff around –"

She shook her head, understanding that he was half-apologizing. "No. You had no idea I was coming." He glanced up at her with raised eyebrows and her breath caught. Maybe he _had_ known she would be coming. There was no way he could guess those things . . . or was there? What did he understand that she didn't? He and his mystique were driving her crazy.

She bowed her head and her fingers tightened around the handle of her coffee cup. "I can read."

He smirked. "Huh."

"No, that's not what I meant," she said hurriedly, blushing. Why did she always make such a fool of herself? "When you talk to that guy you can't remember the name of, I . . . I'll read."

This time he nodded. She smiled when she realized he wasn't eating any of his pancakes, and he'd only ordered them to make her happy. It was strange how all the little things were what mattered. It was strange that they were back in this undefined place again, where she had to pretend she didn't need to be next to him. She wished they were beyond that.

"All I have are shelves of Hemingway," he warned monotonously. She gratefully accepted the gift he was giving her, how he was being himself around her again, and not the awkward act they'd been rehearsing for months. He wasn't like this with anyone else. It was like getting to see the gold and rubies inside of a stone treasure chest.

"I don't believe you," she replied saucily. He grinned, a full-fledged, patented Jess Mariano grin that made her knees feel like they had the consistency of pudding, and she knew she was lucky she had a solid seat beneath her. Shakily, she reached out and began to attack his pancakes.

_"I want what you want. There isn't any me anymore. Just what you want."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

At least she was distracted by the noise and colors. That gave her less attention to devote to how run down this part of the city was, or how far away from the sheltered fairytale land of Stars Hollow and the ivy-covered castle of Yale she was. He maneuvered his car expertly through choked up traffic as the sour smell of the city seeped in through the window that Rory had rolled down. She was half hanging out, craning her head to find the tops of the tallest buildings and leaning forward to see around the corners. This completely un-Rory-like show of curiosity was cute. What a goddamn awful word. Cute.

He saw a bicycle coming down their lane and realized that Rory's head was going to get torn off if she didn't move it, but he'd never been against letting her learn things herself. It was part of what made him different than everyone else around her: he didn't shield her when he didn't have to. Her curls were stirred by the wind whipping off of a passing truck.

Closer and closer the bicycle came, and he watched easily as a red light made him put on the brakes. She was enraptured with some flashing sign or another. He wished they'd had more time back in New York City, all those years ago.

All at once she noticed the bicycle and, with a little shriek, plopped back down on her seat, staring at him with wide eyes. He laughed, and after catching her breath, she did, too.

When he parked in the alley behind the publishing house five minutes later and hefted the bag over his shoulder, her palm stopped him from walking toward the back door. "No," she protested, her fingertips resting lightly on his chest. She swallowed and he froze. Then her hand yanked back like his body was burning it, and he was reminded that they still had this awful monster of mistakes between them. "I want to go in the front door. I want the whole effect."

He watched her standing there, anticipation making her crystal eyes sparkle, her hair soft around her face, the graceful curve of her neck, the way she chewed on her lip when she was nervous. For the billionth time, he wished that he hadn't been such a monumental screw up so long ago, and he wondered where they would be if he'd fixed everything when he could have, when it would have meant something.

He nodded and they began to walk around the front, through a break between two crumbling buildings. A memory came with the sharp, painful clarity of a particularly cold morning, running at him fast and furious, as if it was happening all over again as he breathed.

He'd felt so damn helpless, sitting there, silently staring at her sad face and begging her to ask him, because he wouldn't have been able to leave her if she had demanded that he stay. What was it in _Les Misérables_? _"Yes . . . forbid me to die. Who knows? I might obey." _But she hadn't, either because she'd missed his bag or she hadn't believed he could do something like that to her. Innocent Rory . . . always trusting and seeing the best, even when there was nothing good to see. He watched her walk off the bus, half bitterly justified that she didn't say anything, half broken. No, all broken. Not that he liked to think about it, even now.

Rory's hand rested lightly on the door handle as she stared at the painted "Truncheon" on the sign. Truncheon. What a strangely fitting word.

She turned behind her and saw Jess standing there, something heavy moving behind his beautiful haunted eyes, his mouth in a straight line, his hands rough from manual work he'd done all his life, and she smiled before glancing back at the building. _This is yours._

There were several seconds in which she didn't move.

"You know," Jess said, his voice almost sounding irritated. She knew how much he hated being fussed over, or at least how much he acted like he did. "I think Spice Girls could have broken up and reunited at least six times by now."

Sparing him an annoyed look, she momentarily closed her eyes. "This is my last chance to form a mental picture of what your work looks like."

"Let me spare you the guesswork," he answered dryly. "No dead bodies, no drugs, hardly any stolen goods. Okay? Let's go."

She laughed.

"What?" He asked sharply.

"You're nervous."

He glared at her, the kind of glare that told her more good things than bad things and made her face warm, but he didn't say a word, so she knew she was right. She didn't dare torment him about it, though, because nervous or not, he was still Jess.

Finally, as a particularly loud bus passed by on the street, he reached past her and opened the door himself. She felt the muscles of his arm brush her shoulder and smelled the rich scent of leather from his jacket. His hand found its way to the small of her back and he guided her in, breaking their rule of absolutely no physical contact, but she couldn't move away. _How can he think I can even breathe like that, with him so close to me?_

It was obviously little more than a propelling gesture, because the moment she crossed the threshold his hand left her back and he stepped to the side to increase the space between them. She would have evaluated this, as she was wont to do, but he hurried her through a passageway and all of the sudden she was standing in the middle of the main room.

He saw the cracks in the ceiling, the rips at the corners of the carpet, the places where they needed to touch up the paint again, and the shelves of books that had to be reordered. She saw glistening green walls inlaid with mahogany, beautiful rows containing every type of written material known to man, glossy contemporary paintings that burst with color and comfortable chairs beckoning to be made into reading nooks.

She fell in love with it at first sight.

"Jess," she breathed, but all the words she wanted to say just wouldn't form. Her eyes were full, and the way she was looking at him was like he'd solved world hunger, bettered mankind, won a Nobel.

It would have been funny if it weren't so sad.

He watched her almost laugh, attempt to say something and fail, and then finally glance up at him through golden eyelashes, trying to appear calm and collected. She'd never been good at fooling him. He smirked at her and leaned against the nearest bookshelf as she cleared her throat and wiped her hands on her jeans, looking for all the world like what she thought wasn't worth a damn to him, but it was. She knew it, too. "You're . . . it's . . . I . . ."

He thought of a few sarcastic comebacks to her speechlessness, but in his omnipotent consideration he used none of them. He wasn't entirely sure his throat would make the sounds he wanted it to, anyway. She brushed a finger wonderingly against the sculpture they'd went through hell to get last month, the one that twisted like something out of the nightmare in _Crime and Punishment._

"It's amazing." She was so honest that it took him by surprise. He'd never really been overexposed to honesty. Hell, he wondered if Liz even knew the word 'honesty' was generally accepted as part of the English language.

"It's got the Gilmore stamp of approval?" He asked, feeling his muscles ease, allowing himself to stop focusing on the cracks in the ceiling and all the work he had to do, instead thinking: _Yes. It's good._

She nodded and nervously smiled, letting a strand of hair fall across her face. His body froze when he recognized that movement, when he remembered how she used to always let hair fall into her face just so he would brush it back. She had no idea he knew she did it on purpose, but know he did. His fingertips trembled. God, she was beautiful.

Sometimes you can't think about it anymore. Sometimes you've just got to bite the bullet and go for it. He stood up straight and her eyes widened, doe eyes, bedroom eyes. _Rory, Rory, Rory. _

A still second, the long anticipated heaven at the end of hell, the shaking hearts of two people as they carefully lay back down on the flames that once seared them, needing to be burned again. He wondered if she was going to cry. He hated to see her cry.

"Hey, man, you're back! How'd it go?"

When Leo walked into the room eating cold fried rice out of a week old takeout box, it came at quite possibly the most electrically charged moment Jess and Rory had suffered since that day he'd left years ago. His unfamiliar voice jarred Rory's bones like a sledgehammer, causing her to drop the gaze that had been timidly fixed on Jess down to the floor, her heart pounding with lightning and her cheeks pinkening.

_Oh my God._

She felt dizzy. This was all too much. The familiar and yet distant rushing and twisting and chaotic distortion were grappling with her mind again, making her knees weak and her feet seem almost like they weren't even there. _What just happened?_

If Jess had not been rendered completely incapable of movement by the enormity of the circumstances, he might have punched Leo. For Christ's sake, he had been waiting for that light to reenter Rory's eyes for frigging _years_.

But no. Everything that was so fragile would be lost if he did that. He was strangely inconsistent, like water, and he took a deep breath to calm himself. He watched how she bit her lip and stared at the carpet, blushing, and his ragged breathing began to even out.

_I thought her  
As chaste as unsunned snow._

"This is Leo Nance," he explained, his voice calm and devoid of any trembling, his face regaining its unperturbed expression. On a sudden impulse of fear that he hadn't been effected at all by what happened – because that _would_ be Jess, after all, who had probably been with a higher number of women than she could easily draw up – so she glanced up at his eyes. He did not hide his turmoil from her like he used to. She wanted to kiss him. It was such a strange, strong urge, to feel his bottom lip, the reawake the drugging emotions she hadn't felt from any other man, and it made her cheeks even hotter with embarrassment.

It was like a trance. She was enthralled with it, with him, and she was terrified to find out he still had as much power over her as ever, that she was defenseless against his piercing intensity and his penetrating stare. That she was still captivated by a passion too mysterious for her to understand, made out of shadows like he was. She wanted to run or hide or scream or cry or laugh or _something_, God, _anything_, but it was too real, too shocking, too painful and she was caught up helplessly in the current, like always.

Humiliated, ashamed, and almost horribly eager and relieved at the same time, she murmured, "Hi." Jess raised her eyebrows at her and his hands found their way to his pockets. Somehow that made her a little bit more comfortable, because it was familiar.

"Hi," Leo returned, and when she saw his hair she fought not to giggle. She could only imagine how many comments Jess had made about that. She felt this person she did not know staring at her curiously, and, confused, she noticed a dim glow of recognition in his eyes. He took off his glasses.

"Who're you?" He asked plainly, but she had the weird sensation he already knew.

Jess smirked. "Isn't his eloquence riveting?" His fingertips emerged from his jacket twirling a cigarette, but she noticed how he took one look at her and then stopped searching for a lighter.

"Victor Hugo reborn," she answered, smiling. For some reason, her teasing was softer and easier to take than his. "I'm Rory."

Leo nodded. "I thought so."

Jess' glare almost cut Leo cleanly in two, and immediately Leo cleared his throat. "I mean, I thought . . . I knew Jess went to see . . . and then I just . . . So, how're you doing?" He finished lamely, the fried rice losing his interest.

She hadn't failed to see the silent exchange. "Good, I'm good."

There was an awkward pause as Leo uncomfortably scratched his scalp beneath his huge hair.

"So, uh, Jess . . . that guy from . . . the publishing house is here. Uh, he wants to talk to you. He's in the back, checking out our storeroom."

"Why the hell is he doing that?"

"Well, I don't –"

"We don't let _printers_ in our damn storeroom," Jess spat, like he were using an uncommonly disgusting word. Rory bit back a laugh. He looked at her once, almost asking permission, and with an equal look, she gave it. He pulled his lighter out of his pocket and struck it before turning the cigarette in its red glow. He had to smoke or else he would go crazy.

"I've got to . . ." he trailed off, gesturing wordlessly, but his eyes said _I'm not running away this time_. She felt that painful hope flare up in her again.

"I can read," she reminded him, but she was truly telling him _I'm not, either._ As always, he understood her subtle double meanings, and he grinned a crooked, rare grin. Then he was gone.

She was afraid. There was no use denying it. She was the addict exposing her vein to the needle again, the hopeless dreamer who was drowning in naïveté and refusing to accept what she already knew to be true. They had tried so many, many times, but he always disappointed, always cut his losses and ran, always left her to pick up the shattered pieces of a whirlwind relationship by herself. But even though he had proved everybody and their pitying glances right over and over and _over_ again, he was Jess. God, what else could she say? He was Jess.

She wanted to beg him not to break her this time, but she was too stubborn.

_Reading. You said you would read. _

"Where're you from?" She heard behind her, and, to her dismay, she realized Leo was still standing nearby, watching. She moved over to the roughly hewn bookshelves that looked fairly new. Not all of the books were for sale, but some appeared to be. The entire set up oozed Jess, even if he hadn't created it alone. She noticed that the books were organized by genre, like his CDs always had been, and she smiled.

"I go to Yale," she answered quietly, her index finger tracing the names on random book covers. She almost laughed when she saw that they had three copies of _The Fountainhead_ marked at five dollars each.

"Yale? Wow," Leo muttered under his breath, and she wondered how much he knew about Jess, who could've gotten into Yale in two seconds if he'd tried even a miniscule amount in high school. The idea that he could have possibly went to college with her made her ache, but she shook her head. No. Look at what he'd done here. The path he followed hadn't been the simple, straight-forward, sunny road that other people once tried to persuade him to take, the one she herself had gone down, but through all his twisting and turning something had worked.

The throbbing engine of a loud motorcycle stopping for a moment outside cut off the need for her to say anything else, so she simply gave Leo a nod of polite acknowledgement and re-devoted all of her attention to the books.

A slim, compact novel caught her attention. It was discreetly tucked into a corner of the bookshelf, completely unassuming, but something about it was just different. On its spine, the words _The Subsect_ were printed in simple light letters on a dark background; there were no flowery fonts or wrenching pictures to grab the eye. Intrigued by this and by the title itself, she slipped it out of where it fit perfectly between two larger fictions and turned it over in her hands.

The smell of exhaust drifted in through an open window with a delicate spring breeze, causing her to cough. Someone yelled outside on the sidewalk. Breathing shallowly, now, she gave one final wheeze and then recovered enough to find the edge of _The Subsect_ with her fingertips, in preparation of opening it, satisfying her curiosity.

And then she froze.

_No. It can't be. _

Not believing her eyes, she reached a hand out to the wall and steadied herself there. Her mind was whirling, staggering, going over those two words again and again because she fervently believed that she was misreading them each time: _Jess Mariano. _Jess _Mariano. Jess _Mariano.

It was like there were little cannonballs exploding all throughout her body. The room started to spin dangerously, and when it stopped his name continued to stare her right in the face.

"Leo?" Her voice didn't sound like her own. It was heavier, hungrier, almost sadder.

He looked up from the takeout box. "Hmm?"

She held the book out in her flat palms like it was a sacrificial offering from a Hindi goddess. "Who wrote this?" She couldn't bear to ask bluntly if it was him. Her throat constricted.

He craned his neck to get a better look at it, and then jabbed with a chopstick pointedly at the name on the cover. "Just who it says did." When she continued to look at him questioningly, he looked at her, confused, and then muttered, "Jess wrote it. It took him like four weeks. I've never seen anyone write that fast. Of course, I don't know if the boy even sleeps on weekdays, because sometimes . . ."

Rory wasn't listening anymore. Her fingers trembled. A single proud, victorious tear trembled on her eyelash and dripped down her cheek as she gently opened the book and read the simple dedication: _For Rory._

_"I hate you for loving me; I love you for hating me. Save yourself."_


	20. Chapter 20

**Author's Note: **I'm sorry for the delay! But I think I have the story finished, or almost finished . . . a few more chapters, bear with me! The reviews were great, and I sincerely plead for some more, because this chapter in particular is a little . . . important. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it.

Okay, so maybe the doorway that led to the alley wasn't the _best_ place to hold a business meeting. Perhaps he shouldn't have a cigarette dangling from his mouth as the man, whose name he could never remember, sweated in his business suit, trying to come to some sort of agreement with him. And fine, being _somewhat_ civil wouldn't have killed him.

But Jess didn't like being screwed over. He wasn't exactly happy that the printers had refused to pay him an amount they'd agreed on earlier, and now had the audacity to send a representative after claiming _he'd_ been the one to break the contract. So he was trying to make a statement. From the look on the guy's face, it was working. His point had been greatly furthered a few minutes earlier, when he'd almost physically dragged the man out of the storeroom.

"We noticed that you haven't sent in a new order for books in several days," the man was saying, his watery eyes fixed on a gang of boys that were bouncing a basketball further down the alley. Jess paid them no attention, he had grown up with gangs, but they apparently made quite an impression on his guest.

"Several weeks, actually."

The man cleared his throat. "Yes, well, after a few conferences, we're willing to pay you the amount you've requested, as long as we can draw up a new contract providing for extenuating circumstances."

Jess barely refrained from rolling his eyes. "Oh, goody," he said dryly, smashing his cigarette on the metal railing next to him. "Capitalism comes through again." The heavy sarcasm almost left scorch marks in the air.

There was an awkward pause, as the man tried to think of something to say. Jess left him there to squirm and flung away the smoldering cigarette butt. "I brought the papers with me, if you would like to look at –"

"Huh. I don't think so," he cut in, completely retreating back to the monosyllabic curse he'd had as a teenager. What was wrong with him? He hadn't acted like this in years.

But damn, it felt _good_.

Frivolously, he wondered how old this man was. He had one of those faces that had probably looked forty when he was still in college, and now it had ceased to change altogether. The skin under his eyes was blue. He looked like he could've been a druggie once. Maybe he still was. Hell, this was Philly, he _probably_ still was.

The man was sweating visibly, perspiration beading on his upper lip and brow. Of course, he was wearing a suit jacket and it was a little warm outside, but that probably wasn't the only reason he was overheating. Perhaps not even the main reason.

"May I ask why you, with such little consideration . . .?" _Yes, because consideration is definitely one of my stronger points._

_Ha. Ha . . . Ha . . ._

"Listen," Jess said swiftly, and suddenly he had transformed into something very businesslike. It was almost scary to even himself, how fast that could happen. "We've already got new proposals coming through. It's nothing personal." He smirked ironically. "Okay, maybe it's a little personal."

There really wasn't anything for the man to say. He simply stood there, holding a business card between his slippery fingers, his mind only too obviously furiously working for some means to salvage this particular client and finding none.

A shimmering cloud of smog was hanging over the roofs of nearby rowhouses. Jess watched as a clothesline was pulled through the smog and into a window.

He wanted to get back to Rory. Whatever had just happened in there, in that one second, was like the beginning of an easing away from all the resistance they'd built up over the last couple of years. He'd literally felt a piece of his own pride break, maybe even a portion of her stubbornness fragment. It was impossible for them to be together for any prolonged period of time and not succumb to the driving force between them; he knew this. _She _had to know this. He was positive she did. So why had she come here, with him, throwing them both into that position where they both knew denial was futile?

A loud, blaring horn snapped him back to the sweaty man in front of him. He remembered reading somewhere that a person could lose up to seven liters of water from their body in perspiration.

"I parked out front," the man said pointedly, looking to where Jess was blocking the door to get back inside.

Jess nodded.

"So . . ."

There was a battle of willpower, in which, as always, Jess invariably won, and as the representative of the printers climbed down the steps and marched angrily between two buildings back to the main street, he noticed that the man walked with a slight limp, as if he had a rock in his shoe. That was always annoying, when you got a rock in your shoe.

_Stop stalling. Get your ass back in there._

The distraction was gone and he wouldn't have to deal with that particular printing press again, thank God. So now he had nothing left to do but lick his lip and walk back across the threshold, into the hallway.

It wasn't like he was completely blind. If something happened now, with Rory, she would be with him for what, a few hours? A day at most. But when you wanted something as bad as he did, you had to convince yourself that just a taste of it would be enough. If you didn't, if you told yourself you needed the whole thing, you'd go crazy. Or crazier, anyway.

She was sitting on a chair, her petite body engulfed by its oversized frame, when he slipped noiselessly back into the main room of Truncheon. He liked to just watch her for a second. He wondered what it would feel like to touch her. He wondered what it would feel like to know she wanted him to.

After a moment of silent contemplation, he realized she was reading a book, and _immediately _he recognized which one. _Jeez._ There was a sudden overwhelming urge to deny the whole thing, to say it was just a mockup, or to say it was a misprint (and yeah, right, who would believe that again?), to do anything to keep her from asking questions, painfully probing questions that made his chest hurt, but it was too late. How long had he thought he could hide it from her, anyway? He'd written it _because_ of her.

The first couple of pages had been scattered all across napkins from dispensers at a McDonald's in New York. It'd just been something to do, anything to keep from thinking. God, what he wouldn't have done to keep from thinking. He'd been dangerously close to doing drugs again. Drinking had started to become a problem. The reasons had been many . . . the disappointment Jimmy was, the disappointment California was, the disappointment he was, the disappointment being alone was, but all that was just a cover up. The real reason for his sitting in the bottom of the pit had soft hair and crystal eyes and smooth skin and warm breath and small hands. So what else was there to do, but write? Write, write, write. It was write and pretend you were worth something or look up and know you weren't.

He leaned against the wall, invisible, until she finally looked up. There were a few other customers browsing through the bookshelves, none of which he'd ever seen before. He wished they were alone. This conversation was going to be difficult.

"You wrote a book," she stated, her eyes saying a thousand other things.

"It's not much. Doesn't put a dent in _Atlas Shrugged._"

"You wrote a book."

"You know, I heard somewhere that there're more published authors out there than almost any other method of employment, but you just never hear of ninety percent of them."

"You wrote a book."

"Most books fail within their first week off the press, and whoever wrote them ends up using their pages for barrel fires."

She took a deep breath as he systematically began to retrieve another evasive comeback from within the archives of his brain, and just when he'd finally settled on _"almost half of all novelists end up doing time,"_ she whispered, "You wrote a book for _me._"

What could he say to that? Nothing, really. He wordlessly stared down at the carpet, unwilling to meet the desperate searching pull in her beautiful eyes. She took his silence for the affirmation it was meant to be.

"Excuse me, sir? I was wondering if you knew where I could find . . . do you work here?" He turned to see a tall, middle-aged woman with honey colored hair like his mother's. She looked tired. All the people he'd seen lately looked so incredibly tired.

He glanced once more at Rory, who seemed painfully confused. "No," he said monotonously. Without pausing to gauge whether or not the woman believed him, because he really didn't give a damn, he sat down on the coffee table. She eventually meandered over to another corner.

"Jess," Rory insisted, her fingertips snagging on the edge of his jacket to force him to notice her. He bitterly thought to himself that there was no way he could not notice her, even if he'd wanted to. He'd been trying to not notice her since he was seventeen.

"I can't believe you wrote a book," she said faintly, and he understood that she was dropping the issue of his dedication to her for another time. He was extremely grateful.

"Yeah, Leo and Chris and Matthew were kind of already starting up Truncheon when I came along. They decided to publish it." He laughed a little bit harshly. "They were drunk when they read it."

She raised her eyebrow and he held up his hands, as if to prove he carried no lies on him. "I do not deceive. They were rip-roaring, two-bottles-of-Advil, three-days-in-bed-afterward, Hemingway-like drunk."

This information did not dissuade Rory in the least, who was fully convinced of his literary capabilities. She looked at him and she realized that she had been correct all along, that everything for beauty had been inside of him since the beginning, that his capability, his aptitude, his future had always resided in the brown of his eyes and the intricate workings of his mind. It came, finally, that rewarding feeling of _I was right_, even when everyone else, literally everyone else, saw him as a nothing and a nobody and someone who just pulled her down, dragged her into the underground of humanity, corrupted her.

She ran her fingers over his name on the book cover again.

"I'm sure it was the best drunk decision they've ever made," she murmured. She remembered how deliciously proud of him she'd been when he had told her a couple of months ago that he was working at a publishing house, but it paled in comparison to this liquid feeling inside of her now.

"That's really not saying much. _Really_ not saying much."

She admired his face, how hard it was but how beautiful, how beautiful he was, and in that second he truly was the most amazing thing she'd ever seen. Europe paled in comparison to the black shock of tangled hair, the chiseled cheekbones, the tan face, and his eyes . . . it hurt her to look too long into his eyes, into what could have been – should have been? – and what seemed like would never be.

_We were good, weren't we, you and I? We were._

"You wrote a book," she said slowly, letting her brain wrap around what had been gnawing at her for the past fifteen minutes, "and I'm . . . what have I been doing?"

He looked at her as if she were giving a lecture in Aramaic. "What do you mean, what have you been doing?"

"God, I've been sleeping with a married man, running from my mother, running from my past, trying to pretend and trying to pretend and trying to pretend . . . and Logan . . . and now . . ." She actually felt her lungs constricting as all this piled upon her chest.

His hand was suddenly on her knee, so naturally she wondered if maybe they'd been molded from the same sculpture and then broken apart. It was a brief, poetic, pointless thought. "Stop. Jesus, Rory, stop. You can do whatever you want. You've always been able to do whatever you want, remember? Remember when –" He paused abruptly, unwilling to stroll down memory lane this afternoon, and instead settled for, "You've been doing what you've always wanted to do. You've been going to college."

"You say that like it's another world," she spat out bitterly.

He glanced out the window at the traffic, the smog, the noise, the homeless man in a doorway across the street, the only things he'd ever known in his whole life. "It is," was all he said, simple and honest and broken.

She had promised herself she wouldn't dwell on it. She had. "You could have come, too," she said breathlessly, refusing to cry. "To college."

He leaned back so he wasn't touching her anymore. That was painful. She wanted to inspect his hand, to trace the ridges of his knuckles and the cut of his fingernails, to outline his palms and press them against her own. "Rory . . ."

"No. Don't. You could have if you'd wanted to, and you know it. You . . . you . . . you are so . . . So don't do that. Don't." She was angry and he was trying to keep from seeing that anger turn to tears, as he knew all too well it could do without any warning whatsoever.

"Rory," he said, touching her arm, well aware that she had wanted to tell him this since that day he'd stood there on the sidewalk in California, holding a payphone to his ear, listening to her voice and wishing he could speak but knowing he didn't deserve to have her accept his apology, hearing the ocean in the background and imagining her there with him.

She said nothing.

"Rory, I couldn't have gone to college."

Her lip trembled, but still she did not cry. She understood his spirit perhaps better than anyone else did, because it was like the basest, most basic part of her very own: unsatisfied, searching. She could not redeem him for not being able to tame it, but neither could she believe he would ever have been able to go completely against it. "I know."

"I didn't want to leave you," he said quietly, like he said all the things he really meant, quietly because he had to say them but he didn't want anyone to remember them, because he was so afraid they'd be turned around and used to hurt them. She knew he had good cause to be afraid of that.

"I didn't want you to leave me." It was the first time she had ever said it out loud. She looked at him sadly. "But you did." He was silent. "You did. And when you came back, you . . . you just . . . it was like you vanished all over again. You _did_ vanish all over again!"

"I –"

"It took me two years to be able to say this, so let me say it!" She held out her hand against him, like she could keep the words inside his throat. "I called you a week ago to put you back where you belonged. In the past." His eyes bored into her and she swallowed heavily. Truth danced in and out of her fingertips, daring her to grab it, so she did. "No . . . I called to see if the past _is_ where you belong. Because . . ." Breathing slowly, staring the seat underneath her, thinking of loss and pain and worth. "Because I'm not sure anymore."

The way she looked at him begged for an answer to the question she had not asked. She knew he understood this. He always understood what she was asking. Sometimes he even answered. "You wanted to get my permission to forget me?"

Understanding how crazy those words sounded but confusedly knowing that he had worded it exactly right, she didn't know whether to shake her head or nod. "I . . ." She turned to look out the door and began to play with the ends of her hair. "I've wanted to forget you for a long time now."

"Doesn't work that easily, does it?" He said bitterly. She closed her eyes against him, against the resentment he spoke with, realizing for the first time that the battle they had been locked in, the battle to always up one another, to always inflict more hurt than had been imposed on them, was something that had been destroying him, too. Or at least she allowed the thought to cross her mind.

His voice was heavy, almost like it was leaden. "On the bus . . ." Staring stoically, straight ahead of him, he asked tonelessly, "Why didn't you stay with me?"

It was the wrong thing to ask. They had been quiet so far, and the few other people in the room hadn't really noticed them at all, but at this Rory's heart twisted so viciously it burned like rope being slid across skin. How _dare_ he, after everything she had gone through, after his disappearing acts, after his declarations and promises that he could not keep, even ask that? "Why didn't you tell me you were leaving?" She asked harshly, her voice rising. "You just _sat_ there, like everything was wonderful, like it was just another day, like you'd be pouring my coffee six hours later! And then I . . . when I . . . You were just _gone_. Everyone knew but me!" She stomped her foot like a child because there was nothing else she could do, and her blazing eyes quieted as she finally gave in and a tear splashed onto her lap. "You have no idea what that . . . how I . . . Why in God's name did everyone know but me?"

He rested his forehead in his hands and said nothing. She wanted to scream. Finally, he muttered, "Because I didn't care about anyone but you."

The stone around her heart cracked but did not shatter. It was the last thing she had expected him to say, and it rolled off her like rain. "What? That doesn't even make –"  
"Yes it does, Rory! I knew that was the last time I was going to see you for . . . I didn't even know how long! I didn't have a fucking choice, don't you get that?" He raked his hand through his hair, yelling at her, really yelling at her, for the first time since he had heard about Dean. He looked at her with eyes that were usually so closed off but now simmered and boiled. "The last time, the last memory you had of me, did you want it to be me telling you that I wasn't going to graduate? That Luke had kicked me out? That . . . that I couldn't be with you anymore?"

She shook her head as if he was lying, her fingers nervously tugging on the belt loop of her jeans. "You could have been with me still." She exhaled shakily and refused to look at him. When she finally spoke again, it was so softly that he almost thought she wasn't speaking at all. "I _am_ that kind of girl." She wiped a tear furiously from her eye. "I always wanted to say I wasn't, but I am." Another long pause as he tried to remember what she was talking about but couldn't. "All you had to tell me was that you would come back and I would have waited."

He felt his ribcage snap. "Would you have believed me?"

She smiled, the smile contrasting painfully with her tears. "No. Yes. I don't know. But I would have waited."

The atmosphere changed so suddenly and electrically the air almost sparked with static. Rory's stomach was gone, her insides were squirming, her mind was careening into that blank nothingness and her hands were trembling because she recognized that look in his eyes, the raw desire that he could not master, no matter how hard he tried, and she felt the flaring that told her the same look was reflected in her own.

They were back in this dance. It was helpless, it was hopeless. He looked at her and he wanted to break her because she had broken him. He could never forgive her for that.

_"How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me." _

Pent up passion, he reflected as he came closer and closer to her, was a dangerous thing. It completely eclipsed all reason and sense. But he was sick of being reasonable and sensible. He had ruined the best thing in his life under the ruse that he was being reasonable and sensible, and now, dammit, if only for a few minutes, he was done with that.

When he kissed her he tasted her tears, hot with resentment and something thicker, deeper, something that told him she missed him more than she despised him. He forgot what they were fighting over. In fact, he forgot that they had ever been fighting at all. All he could concentrate on was this, this second, these soft lips, and he realized that he had been running from and toward the same thing for two long, damn, lonely years.

She leaned toward him over the arm of her chair. He intoxicated her, she was drunk on him, she _needed_ him, and she only realized now how big a part of her had been missing when she found it again. This kiss, like all the others before it, pushed too far and she didn't care, she kept pushing it further, she tangled her hands in his messy hair and breathed him in and wanted him more than she could ever remember before. Why had they waited so long for this?

And then there was nothing, nothing but him and her and the nothingness.

When he broke the kiss and looked into her half-closed sky-colored eyes, he knew nothing would ever be the same again as it had been. He knew he could not go on fooling himself, telling himself that he accepted what was and didn't want anything out of her anymore. He wanted _everything_. He wanted her to want him to want everything.

Their foreheads touched and he smiled against her mouth. She felt him pulling her arms down and then threading his fingers through the spaces of her own. She was Jell-O, jam, water, air, nothing, everything, flying, running, falling, thirsty, hungry, full.

She looked at him and she looked at their hands and she looked at his smile, one of the real ones, one of the ones he never gave to anyone else. She tried to piece together what had just happened but couldn't.

"At least that still works," he said, half joking, half serious. She catalogued the shadows on his face. His book was still in her lap. Everything was in slow motion.

She nodded, kind of crying but not really anymore. He wasn't completely surprised when she stood up and, staring at him with an apology she couldn't verbalize, walked out the front door.

_"(He) watched . . . with his hard proud eyes that knew how things could be and how they would be instead . . . proud of how they could be, believing in how they could be, even if they never were . . ."_


	21. Chapter 21

**Author's Note**: I've had this chapter done for awhile, but I can't quite work it out to where I like it. This is what I ended up with, though, and I hope that it's a good follow up. Thank you very much for all the reviews (all of them went something like, "WHAT?! SHE WALKED OUT?!") and keep them coming :)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There was no where to go and she had no car. Those were the facts she had to work around.

Crowds of people, hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people were clogging the sidewalks, pressing in on her, and she gratefully dissolved into them. She became a nameless face in a sea of countless others, and for a second, her problems shrank with her. There was the hard, cold concrete, the thin lampposts and towering steel buildings, the glass windows and old brick houses smashed against one another. It was an external chaos that half rivaled her internal chaos. It was comforting.

That lasted for about the first fifteen minutes.

Oh _God_, what had she done? What had they done? The very thing she had fought against, the one thing that could be her downfall, was back all over again. It would never be over. Never, never, never, no matter how she stifled it or tried to stamp it out or suffocated it. It was there like kryptonite.

And even amidst all this turmoil inside of her, she could not ignore that one, small little flame of absolute ecstasy that was dancing in her soul. How long she had waited for those few seconds! It had been sheer want, sheer desire that finally won over ever practical bone in her body. She, the princess of common sense, had let go for a moment and it was miraculous. Maybe it had been the book, or just the overwhelming physical attraction, but maybe it was something deeper. He definitely was still the same in that area. His kiss, as tempered as it had been by the surrounding circumstances, absolutely sealed her in fog, left her stumbling, reeling, staggering. He was, she thought to herself, blushing, the absolute best kisser she had ever known.

The look in his eyes when he broke away had been tender. It melted her. It was something vaguely familiar, the same glowing beauty she'd seen under the tree at Sookie's wedding, at the gas pump, on the street during the carnival when he had thrown his love to her and then took off, as if it were a burden he could not stand to take away with him and had to deposit in Stars Hollow.

Who was she to assume he still felt the same way? Honestly, after she had denied him without explaining why, who was she to dare to think he'd continue to hold onto her?

This dark, terrible, beautiful, craggy thing was building up in her again, stronger, undefined, stormy, demanding. It was worse than want and need. It was a mix of the two, a terrifying reliance on someone who had proved over and over again that he was unreliable.

_"You can count on me. I know you couldn't before, but you can now!"_

She was standing on the edge of a precipice, with her foot dangling into the depths she could not see, a monster chasing her and uncertainty waiting in the abyss. What would she find at the bottom? She had absolutely no idea.

_"That's the fun part, isn't it?"_

But how much longer could she stand there, honestly? There was no way she could back away; she'd tried that a million times and it hadn't worked. This edge was tantalizing to her, mesmerizing, captivating, a porthole into a world she didn't even know existed, just like when she was seventeen.

_We'll always be seventeen._

She couldn't pretend anymore. She couldn't do it alone. It was absolute stupidity to ignore something that fed on her like that, drew her blood, intermixed with her until she couldn't separate herself from it. Yes, maybe it was another huge mistake. Maybe it was simply yet another repeat of a scene they'd already filmed a dozen times, another fracture in a bone they'd already shattered.

But perhaps, just perhaps, this was the real thing. The honest-to-God thing. Standing there in jeans and a leather jacket, the same as he always had, just a little bit more grown up now. She couldn't live with herself if she missed it. Not again.

She needed coffee, and no, she wasn't going to be too particularly choosy. Selecting the first stand she came to, she bought the biggest coffee they had and drank it while the orderless order of the city trampled around her.

_"Take thy sorrow to heart, and make it a part of thee, and it shall nourish thee till thou art strong again."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jess wasn't a huge fan of Hamburger Helper, but neither was he equipped with a culinary haven to work with, so it was going to have to do. He ripped open the box and started to boil the water, moving silently and numbly around the kitchen.

She didn't run very often. That was more or less his department. But what he'd learned over the course of their relationship was that when she _did_ run, he had to let her go. There was nothing worse than holding onto a bird when it was trying to fly away. Maybe by accident your fingers would crush it in its delicacy, or you would break its wings. So he stood there like an idiot over the stove, every nerve in his entire body telling him to go after her, but not moving toward the door.

If she didn't come back, she didn't come back. Damn him for thinking that way, but what else was there that he could do? It was one-thirty on a weekday, and even in Philadelphia one-thirty on a weekday wasn't too bad. She'd be fine. The idea of her still being around, alone, at night, was what made his skin crawl.

He knew he shouldn't have done it. He knew she was overloaded with shit right now, with the accident, with her recent break up, with Yale. But, honestly, how was he supposed to resist that draw, that magnetism, which always seemed to triumph in the end? She had been sitting there, her eyes glassy with tears, and for the first time in a long time he'd read in her what had once been radiating from every pore of her body: she had to have him. It was a deep, hard, fast physical need, gritty and painful, but it was also denser than that, almost spiritual. And, of course, he'd never stopped needing her. So what was there to do? She was beautiful, so beautiful, and she'd been beckoning to him.

He was so tired of this game that they were playing. He couldn't do it forever, could he? This coming together and ripping apart, this fatally flawed, deadly desire that led them to each other only to make them turn around and tear at one another. It drained on him, exhausted him.

But could he completely let go? Could he avoid the pain, but avoid all of the dangerous beauty, too? He wasn't sure.

If she had stayed long enough, he would've told her it wouldn't be like last time. That he needed her, that he _could not_ lose her again, and that she wouldn't have to carry the burden alone. Or maybe he wouldn't have told her, but he would have showed her, and she'd have understood. They were just like that. Always had been.

But she'd left, and here he was, with Hamburger Helper.

_Can it be different? _

Jess Mariano didn't live in a world of second chances, and third and fourth chances might as well go to hell. Come on, he'd seen someone killed when he was twelve. He winced and unconsciously fingered the scar on his shoulder blade, remembering. If he was cynical, the world had brought it up in him. He didn't postulate or guess or bet anything on a wishful fantasy. Matter of fact, he despised even _having_ wishful fantasies. So it hurt him a little to hope on this one, but God, what else was there for him to do? He wanted this more than anything he'd ever wanted in his life. He wanted _her_. He almost couldn't remember any time in his life not wanting her.

Leo, who, of course, had witnessed the whole gut-rattling sequence of events, was leaning on a nearby counter, looking at Jess' pack of cigarettes that lay on the kitchen table and, Jess had a feeling, thinking of stealing one. Out of the corner of his eye, Jess saw him moving minutely in the cigarette direction.

"Remember what happened to Harry Morgan? Worse. Much worse," Jess said lowly, never taking his stare off of the boiling water. He doubted Leo had even read _To Have and Have Not_, but his currently swamped mind absolutely could not think of another allusion that was closer to Leo's taste.

He looked up out the window for the tenth time during the last two minutes, but she was not there. He could tell that Leo wanted to ask about Rory. Fortunately, he felt no inkling of conscience that told him he should explain, so he didn't.

Leo, however, apparently had no inkling of conscience as well. Either that or he was just really, really stupid. "So are you that bad of a kisser? Seriously, man, she was out of here like plastic on Joan Rivers."

After getting over the initial "that makes no sense" reaction, Jess' fingers tightened around the spoon he was holding, his knuckles turning white. He said nothing. It was too difficult to get into, too sore, too recent, and damn Leo if he thought he was going to open up like this was a damn Dr. Phil marathon and start blubbering all over their damn Great Value napkins.

He felt her come in more than he heard it, but he heard it, too. She'd never been as quiet as he was. Maybe it was the way her heels made a soft clacking noise on the carpet, or how her clothes rustled when she walked. He could almost smell her. That's when he knew he was getting to be ridiculous.

She stood in the doorway and he did not turn around. Leo, sensing something that could perhaps be dangerous to his physical wellbeing, skirted around her and out the doorway. The water began to boil, a deep, rolling boil, and Jess poured the uncooked noodles into it.

He was afraid of what she would say, of what she would tell him to do. There was no way in hell he could ever forget what she felt like against him, the way she kissed, the way she tasted, so she better not ask him to. It wasn't even a question of what he wanted. He just couldn't do it.

What would it be like to have all this behind them? To be able to hold her again, to touch her, to kiss her without caring about what anyone else thought?

"The coffee in Philly is amazing," she said softly, although her tone said something else. He almost burned himself on the electric panel he was cooking on, but pulled his finger away just in time.

"You're generous. It's pretty gross."

Her voice wavered. "I actually don't think I tasted it when I drank it."

He didn't know what to say to that. There was a lump in his throat. What was she trying to tell him? He was so, so sick of dancing on the edges of their relationship, of refusing to get into what was really going on between them, of avoiding the sticky spots in hope that they would clean themselves up, and then when they finally got the courage to glance at the mess they'd made, one of them bolted. He refused to do that anymore.

Turning around, he saw her standing there, her peach-colored sweater complimenting her eyes and her complexion and her figure, her hair laying on her shoulders, her fingers clutched around a Styrofoam coffee cup. She was magnificent, like Mona Lisa or the Taj Mahal or Angel Falls.

"You . . . kissed me," she whispered. His breathing became shallow. He nodded.

She hated how she couldn't tell what he was thinking, and he was just reading her like an open book. There was a solemnity on his face, maybe even a little uneasiness, but nothing else. It was like that night on the bridge after the dance marathon. She didn't know if he was doing it on purpose or if he just automatically hid everything, but she wanted it to be the latter.

Her legs trembled as she continued to step into new territory for them, or at least territory they hadn't been in for a very, very long time. "I wanted you to."

The wary look in his eyes shifted for just a moment, something more relieved and disbelieving taking its place instead. Then he looked down at the floor and leaned against the counter, a bitter smirk on his face. "Most people would see running away as kind of an antitheses to that statement," he said huskily, in the deep way he had from smoking too much.

"I . . . I . . . I was scared."

He gazed at her again, unreadable. "Of me?"

_Yes._ "No. At least . . . Jess . . . of us, of what always happens. Not of you. Of what . . ." She broke off, turning to glance out the window, listening to the soft bubbling sound of the boiling water, wishing she was far away from here and yet dying inside at the though of leaving. "Of what you do to me."

She was infinitely grateful that he didn't ask her what she meant, because it would have killed her to say it. He understood. His leather jacket was off now. He didn't wear T-shirts very often, but today he was. It was black, just plain black, which didn't surprise her very much. She watched as his hands found their way into his jean pockets.

"I don't want it to be like that again," she went on, nervously, afraid that she misunderstood him and that he didn't want anything to do with her, afraid that he was going to leave her cold and naked and alone, because he could do that.

"Okay," he said simply, studying the linoleum.

She understood what he meant because she recognized the word, but she wanted to cry. She wanted him to _say_ what he felt, to come out with it again, to become vulnerable like she was, because her head was most certainly on the chopping block. But that was against his nature. He'd done it once, back last winter, with three words, and he wasn't going to do it again. At least that's what she comprehended.

Wordlessly, she moved next to him and opened the nearest cupboard, looking for bowls. There were none, but she saw a stack of paper plates on top of the refrigerator and stood up on her tip toes to reach them. He was surprised to see the lone tear that dripped down her eye and splashed on the counter, but he didn't ask about it. His hands cautiously brushed hers. When she didn't move away, he closed his fingers around her wrists and gently, slowly, carefully as though she was made of glass, pulled her toward him. She closed the last foot in between their bodies on her own, her eyes not meeting his but fixed on the muscles of his neck. What this meant for them, neither could have said. It was confusing and they weren't going to sort it out, not now, not yet.

"It _won't_ be like that again, okay?" He said softly, ducking his head so she was forced to make eye contact with him. Their foreheads brushed together. Her perfume was the most wonderful scent he'd ever smelled in his whole life.

She looked like she wanted to say something, but couldn't. He waited. "Don't break me," she finally murmured very quietly, so quietly that it hardly stirred the air around them. He swallowed heavily. His skin was on fire. He hated himself for making her so afraid of what could happen between them.

_Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee._

"Okay," he said again. He dipped his head and met her feverish lips, blindly falling into that place that had burned them before but was welcoming them now, sweetly sealing a promise he should have made a long time ago. There was ice and flame and satisfaction and craving and the need for more, always the need for more, more, more, more.

She was shaking when she pulled away, and he brushed his lips against her forehead. She looked up at him and smiled, the first smile since whatever had just happened had happened, and he felt the stormy clouds that suffocated them dispersing.

"I wanted to go with you," she said quietly, glancing down at their hands, mesmerized by how small and slender hers looked next to his, running her finger over his knuckles and calluses, like she was attempting to read Braille. "I . . . I wanted . . . I wanted to go with you to . . . to New York."

He felt his insides give a vicious twist when he remembered that night after Yale, sitting in his apartment, a drag on a cigarette and a book, alcohol, all that alcohol. That was when he hit bottom. Rock-solid, honest bottom. Or at least that was when he opened his eyes and realized he had been there for a long time. "Why didn't you?"

She looked at him like he was asking why it rained or why people couldn't breathe underwater or why one plus one equaled two. "You didn't have room for me."

He knew what she was talking about, and it had nothing to do with the pathetically small apartment that he had shared with four other guys or how the backseat of his car probably wouldn't have been able to fit all of her boxes. "You could've pushed and shoved and made room. I think I would've let you."

"No," she said, turning away to look out the window. "That's what you've always done, the pushing and shoving. Not me." She wasn't accusing him, just stating the truth. He wondered if it would be okay to touch her again.

_Sometimes I need the damn pushing and shoving, though. I'm not strong enough to do it all on my own._

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The note had been simple, Lorelai reflected as she crossed the street. Gut-wrenching in its simplicity, completely un-Rory-like, short. Since when had Rory ever been short? She wrote a book on paragraph assignments, completely used all their printer paper in two weeks, and even filled out a journal that she only remembered to write in maybe twice a year. The word "short" wasn't even in her vocabulary unless she was discussing Tom Cruise!

_Mom,_

_I'm going off for the day. Just to burn some stress. I'm fine. Be back soon. Don't worry. Call my cell if you need me –_

_Rory_

Uh huh. Right. Don't worry. That was like telling a priest not to pray or something. Completely oxymoronic. And "just to burn off some stress?" The last time Rory had randomly disappeared for a whole day without giving any valid reason at all had been –

Well, yeah, that made sense. Same guy.

It wouldn't be so hard, so _bad_, if Lorelai didn't know where her daughter had gone. Or who she went there with, more precisely. Her mind automatically conjured images of Rory sitting with him at some truck stop, clad in black leather and smoking a cigarette. It was like Grease. She shivered. It wasn't normal for Rory to take off with her friend Lane condemned to lie in bed for another week or two at least, even if she was in stable condition. It wasn't like Rory at all.

He had always managed to bring out that side of her, hadn't he?

She was angry. When she told him to make sure he let Rory know before he left, she didn't mean this. There was, in her mind, no other explanation for where Rory could have gone. But at the same time . . . the fact of the matter was, Jess hadn't begged. She knew very little about him, but she knew enough to deduce that. So, by process of elimination, Rory had _wanted_ to go. She wasn't sure how she felt about this. All she knew was that she had to get more information.

Yes, she would be the first to admit that she'd been avoiding Luke's like a plague. It had about killed her, living without his fantastic coffee and hamburgers, and living without something else that she wasn't quite prepared to label at the moment. That was nothing new. She hadn't been prepared to label it for years. But there was only one place to go, one link between herself and what had happened that morning, and it was symbolized by the corner diner with a sign hanging out front and old blinds covering its windows.

She wasn't really that nervous when she went inside. Well, no, she was nervous, but her mission was more important and seriously downplayed the anxiety. She had no time for herself or for her own feelings when Rory was in the mix.

He was standing behind the counter, and the way he looked up quite obviously told her that she was the last person he expected to walk in through that door. He dropped the pencil he'd been scratching at a piece of paper with and gripped the coffeepot nearest him. "Lorelai . . ."

"Luke," she said gently, awkwardly, but then rocketed past whatever it was with the word 'daughter' flashing in her head. "So, how was Rory feeling this morning?"

His look of apprehension turned to one of absolute confusion, which momentarily broke the façade of gentlemanliness he had been attempting over the past few days. "How the hell should I know?"

_God, if Luke wasn't up . . . what time did they leave this morning?_ "Jess is gone?"

He shrugged, grabbed the coffeepot, and poured her a cup without her having to ask. That gesture, in its comfortable routineness, made her feel a little bit calmer. She noticed he had shaved. "Jess is gone."

"Ah." Right. Now would be the time to find a delicate way to phrase this, but alas, there was none. "He took someone with her. She's about five-foot-seven, brown hair, blue eyes . . . That is, if he didn't convince her to just dye her hair green while she's at it, or maybe –"

"Jeez. He took Rory?" Luke interrupted, his face wearing an expression of mortal shock. Poor, naïve Luke. He could never see these things coming, these highly inevitable things that had been as audible as a train for the past two years. She sighed heavily.

"Or Rory took him. Something like that." She drank the coffee slowly, like it was an elixir, and allowed it to settle hot and steaming in her stomach. Kirk was sitting at a table nearby, deftly picking egg whites out of his eggs, which he had probably been doing for the past hour or two. She watched him for a moment, transfixed.

"I'm gonna _kill_ him," Luke hissed, throwing the rag he had been using onto the counter and flexing his fingers like he physically needed to hit something. "He told me . . . he said he hadn't come back for . . . to . . . and I _believed _him. What a jerk!"

It had been the first time he met his nephew, Luke remembered now, as Jess climbed off the bus. It was in that _second_. The look in his eyes, the wary suspicion around his mouth, maybe even the damn "go to hell" way he held his shoulders, had all told him what he was being painfully reminded of now, like a particularly unfriendly blow to the stomach: you could not trust him. No matter how much he seemed to have changed, here he was caring about no one but himself again, grabbing that innocent girl again, throwing her on a whirlwind ride all damn _over_ again –

"I don't think so. Well, no, he _is_ a jerk," Lorelai added thoughtfully, as if it was the best compliment she could dig out of herself, "but this time I think . . . Rory is the . . . initiator." By the way she stared down at the counter he knew it was hard for her to say. It was even harder for him to believe.

"She was over him the second he left town," he argued, his arms folded across his chest, trying to keep this from getting too sentimental and personal, because he didn't do so well with that crap. Especially around Lorelai, although she was the only one he made the effort for. "Sometimes, I think she was over him even _before_ he left town."

"That's your right, I guess." Kirk was still picking his egg whites out. She wondered how many combined hours of his life he had wasted on egg whites. "You can think whatever you want. But Luke," she said, a suddenly serious note in her voice, turning to look at him with impaling navy eyes, "I'm telling you, she never let herself get over him."

"Aw, jeez," Luke said, waving her words away. He hated the thought that what she said could possibly be true. He hated it because he remembered how hard Jess had fallen, how hurt he had been, no matter how he well he'd hid it. The idea that Rory had secretly been in love with him, too, made him physically ill, because he knew as well as anyone that nothing could persuade either to stop the rehearsed I-don't-care act they were so prone to. If it were true, if they were both still hung up on each other, they were stuck on some sort of helpless circle that he couldn't get them off of.

No, it was much easier to believe that Jess had once again grabbed the foot of the princess-like Rory in his trap. Much easier.

"They haven't been together for _two_ years," he emphasized, going through a stack of receipts beside him just so he would look like he was doing something. It was strange how he and Lorelai could just fall back into this pattern. Strange, but sad.

"But he keeps showing up, right before the last cut he made heals," she explained softly, in her womanly way, as if she were discussing with a kindergartener when it came to emotions. That probably wasn't too far from the truth.

"So you're tellin' me that she can't . . . let go," – here he paused, hating how corny that sounded – "of him. That, with her best friend in the hospital, she looked up and _all of the sudden_ saw him as the knight in shining armor he never was, and then she decided to . . . to run off with him to God knows where?"

The ridiculous spin he attempted to put on the situation did not disturb Lorelai in the least. "Maybe. I think so." She rested her head in her hands, looking quite weary without warning, tired from trying to protect her daughter from something that always got to her anyway. "It's just . . ."

Luke looked at her with eyes that told her he understood, and she sighed, the only thing to stop her from caving in to the sudden desire she had to cry.

"He really has changed, Lorelai," Luke muttered. Even he didn't want to admit it, even he didn't want to allow himself to think that maybe the once-street-punk had another chance with the girl he'd almost come to regard as a daughter, but it came in a sudden flash of comprehension: he _was_ different. Yeah, that over-confident, nonchalant, I-don't-give-a-damn smirk was still ever-present on his face, and he was rude, and sarcastic, and _infuriatingly _calm, but . . . it was in the way he held Rory when she was at the hospital, or how his eyes softened when she glanced over at him, or how he did everything humanly possible to keep her from crying, even in how he had come back to Luke's and helped him close up the day after the accident without being asked. That wasn't old Jess, or maybe it was old Jess and Luke had just never seen it.

"I saw," she answered, half-laughing at the absurdity, the improbability, of it all. "I saw how he's changed."

"He . . . you know . . . he changed because of her," he went on, shifting uncomfortably on his feet, his palms sweating, but knowing that what needed to be said needed to be said and he was going to say it, dammit.

"I guessed something kind of along those lines," she stated flatly, staring at the remaining coffee in her cup. _Jess._ Jess. Jess and Rory. How long had she thought she'd be able to prevent it, anyway? It wasn't like she hadn't felt it, that pulling, that yanking, despite how her daughter fought it, and then didn't fight it, and then fought it again. It was the kind of love story that didn't have an ending, just several hashed and messed up plot points.

She still didn't like him. Old feelings ran hard and deep. But then again, it wasn't really her decision, was it?

"Call her," Luke demanded suddenly, unable to bear watching her sit there in despair anymore. He took a sharp inhale when her sparkling azure eyes, sparkling maybe because of unshed tears, met his.

"What?"

"Call her."

"But what about the . . . the no phones in . . . you know?" She asked, motioning vaguely toward the infamous sign that hung behind him with the big red cross over the image of a cell phone.

Like it caused him mortal pain, he ground out, "Just this once."

The disbelief she gazed at him with made him wonder if perhaps he was a little crazy for being so strict on the phone thing, but he caught himself. Thinking like that was dangerous. Allowing her to penetrate his thoughts was dangerous. Before he knew it, he'd be eating six thousand calories a day and refusing to shovel snow. He wouldn't be able to cook, which would be absolutely –

"Really?"

"_Just_ this once."

"Maybe I should document –"

"You know what? Forget it," he said angrily, turning back to his dishrag, thoughts of Rory and Jess and their demented relationship as far away as his patience.

"No, no, I'm sorry. Thank you." He didn't turn around to acknowledge that he'd heard her, but inwardly groaned at the sound of digital buttons being jabbed in _his_ diner.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

They were finishing their meager lunch when Rory's phone rang. Her head, filled with heavier, harder thoughts than when she had read Plato's _The Republic_ or overloaded herself her freshman year at Yale, did not immediately register the sound of her phone coming from her pocket. When it finally clicked, she started, and hurriedly glanced up to find Jess looking at her with amusement etched all over his face.

"It's my mom," she explained, embarrassed to be caught in such a reverie.

The smirk on his lips only deepened as he nodded and glanced back down at his paper plate. What was there to say to that? _Oh great, tell her hi for me, and by the way, ask her not to kill me, please?_ He watched her hesitate to answer it or not as the annoying jangling continued to jangle. Finally, looking at him apologetically for some reason, she punched the green button.

"Hello?" There was a long, long interlude. Jess idly thought that perhaps he could fit half of a Beethoven symphony into it. Well, maybe only a quarter. Yes, he had actually listened to a whole Beethoven symphony before. Call it a guilty pleasure. It at least gave him more self respect than Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears. How they even were allowed admittance into the music industry, the same one that The Clash had –

"Yes. _Yes_."

He raised his eyebrows, she rolled her eyes, and he tried not to laugh. Out of all the awkward situations . . . Honestly, he somewhat enjoyed making Stars Hollow have one collective heart attack when they realized their enthroned Rory was missing, but . . . for some reason, he didn't want to anger Lorelai.

"I'm at his publishing house, in Philadelphia . . . Of course he _works_ there, what else would he do? . . . Very funny." She motioned to Jess that she wanted to see his wristwatch, but he shook his head just to be annoying. Of course, she couldn't say anything, so she simply glared, and he refocused on the last of his Hamburger Helper, grinning.

"I . . . I just wanted to . . . No, he didn't . . . I'm the one who asked him . . . He rooms with a couple other guys. I've only met one . . . of course . . . you know Jess wouldn't let . . . Mom, he's . . . Okay." After the reception of whatever tirade her mother had been giving, Rory's eyes softened. "Yes. I know. I'm sorry . . . I'll be back tonight or tomorrow. _Mom_. Please trust me . . . He's not going to . . . Yeah."

There was a pause and he was stunned to see tears thickening on her eyelashes. None fell. "A really long time," she whispered, glancing up at him as if to reassure herself that he did not know what she was talking about. He had a pretty good guess, but it didn't show on his face. "I'm not . . . it's too . . . I'll talk to you later . . . I love you. I know. Thank you, mom." A bittersweet smile pulled at her lips and she hung up softly.

Determined to keep her from being too uncomfortable, he allowed the silence to ease her for a moment before asking, only half-jokingly, "Has she decided what she wants to do with my skin when she removes it from my body?"

"She's been wanting a new throw rug for the family room for awhile now," she answered, playing with the flip cover of her phone.

His eyes turned serious on her, peeling away at her dermal membranes, melting her heart, and she had a sudden urge to reach out and cover his hand with her own. Was that okay? "Rory," he prodded, wanting the truth now.

"She was pretty mad. But . . . it was me, not you."

He laughed at that, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs out in front of him in that boyish, broken posture she'd always adored about him. "Yeah. Right. Ever since we were seventeen it's _never_ been you."

"It's about time, then," she said, smiling, talking about something else that made his stomach flutter a little, the Hamburger Helper taking the place of butterflies.

"Yeah," he said quietly, and he was the one who reached out for her hand, pressing his palm against hers, looking at how delicate her fingers were compared to his. "It's about damn time."

He leaned across the table like he once had across a counter, recognizing the look of surrender that flashed through her crystalline eyes and the way her mouth widened to form a little "o" of surprise and anticipation and desire. It made his blood pound against the walls of his veins with the force of a sledgehammer.

He ran his hands through her hair, feeling the way each glossy strand clung to his knuckles, grazing the base of her neck. She leaned her head into the cup of his palm, letting him caress her like he once had, falling back into the realm of a perfection they never could quite control.

"What are we doing?" She asked confusedly, almost desperately, closing her eyes as he stroked her cheek. It was the temptation she could never resist, not even now, not after everything had happened, and she wanted reassurance. She wanted him to say that they were following some kind of carefully structured plan, that he had it all figured out, that all she had to do was follow him and they'd be fine.

But of course, Jess wasn't that kind of guy. He and structure and plan didn't even belong in the same universe. And, when it all came down to it, that was one of the magnets that forcefully yanked her to him.

"Huh. I don't know," he answered, the rare smile making him a million times more beautiful than any other man she had ever seen, making his eyes like liquid pools of gold-flecked chocolate. She shivered. "I think I was about to kiss you."

The table was suddenly a hindrance. The very air in between them was a hindrance. The two long, lonely years were a hindrance. She started to scoot her chair closer to him, but then gave up and stood. For a second they merely examined each other, daring each other, testing each other, and then she leaned down closer to him, her hair brushing the tip of his nose. It was almost like a movie, except in a movie he wouldn't have to bend in a position that left his neck at a one-eighty angle and his legs cramped up.

"Jess! Man, we've got people asking questions out here! About your book! Where are you?" This time it was Matthew, less annoying than Leo on a typical day but extremely irritating at the moment. He clenched his fists and barely restrained from growling while Rory blushed and moved back to give him some space. _I don't need any more freaking space._

"Jess! Get your ass out here!"

Jess stood up and stalked over to the doorway. Rory couldn't see exactly what he was glaring at, but the next moment she heard the unfamiliar voice mutter a small "Please" and then rigorously began discussing the benefits of mid-Eastern literature with another person in the next room. She smiled despite herself.

He turned and looked at her with sincere regret written all over his face, which made her feel a little better. "I . . . I've got to . . ."

"You've got to go talk about your book."

He rolled his eyes. "Goody." His return to his monosyllabic order explained that he was preparing to go deal with people other than her. She remembered this.

There was a long pause, and suddenly the monosyllabic order flew out the window to be replaced by a whole sentence. "I'm glad you came, Rory," he said huskily, suddenly, without dressing it up at all, and it was the sincerest thing she had heard him say maybe for all the time she had known him. He looked like Apollo to her in that second, an intricately jagged sanctuary, the release from the vapid coldness of her loneliness, a screen outside of herself that led to her soul

"I am, too," she whispered. He silently nodded, watching her in the noon sunlight streaming through the window like gossamer dew, and then, mentally beating himself up for being so poetic, turned around to go out to the customers, telling himself that she would still be there when he came back.

It was strange how a moment he had been rehearsing for years could happen so suddenly in the midst of fading linoleum and synthetic noodles, but then again, that was the infamous Jess and Rory way.

He needed to think this out some more. He needed a blank notebook to scribble in, a fresh cigarette pack, maybe a good Sex Pistols album. Unfortunately, none were available to him at the moment. Except he thought maybe he had a fresh cigarette pack hidden behind the couch. He'd have to check that.

"Uh, Jess –"

"Jeez! I'm coming!"

_"How does a newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings?"_


	22. Chapter 22

**Author's Note:** There will be two more chapters after this one and then, I think, _Redemption_ will be complete. A sequel is in the works, but I'm not sure if I'll post it or not . . . Thank you for all the reviews. The quote at the end of last chapter is from _Satan and Solicitions_. If there's ever a question about any of my literary quotes (they are all literary quotes, by the way), feel free to ask!

Review, please. And this is definitely one of those chapters where the "T" rating really does apply.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She had fallen asleep during their third movie. Her eyelids were sweetly closed, her head resting on the arm of the sofa, her hair splayed out behind her. _Spinal Tap _continued to unravel on the screen, but it was about as interesting to him in that second as ear wax or toothpick synthesizing. Instead, he focused all of his attention on the way she rose and fell as she breathed, how her legs were curled and a bare foot was hanging off the edge of the cushion.

He'd never seen her sleep like that before, he realized now. It felt kind of like spying on some sort of pure thing, something not as cliché as an angel but beautiful nonetheless. She was on her side, her gentle curves pressed into the sofa. He found the small indent in her chin and the mark on her forehead from a fall she'd told him about having when she was eight.

They hadn't kissed again over the course of the evening, and why, he didn't know. Hell, he'd seen at least twenty opportunities to dive right in, and it wasn't like _every single fiber _of physical being wasn't going into almost epileptic fits to do just that, but they'd been there before. They'd been in that place where they'd let the attraction pull them down because it was just too strong. This time . . . if this _was_ a this time . . . it would have to be slow.

She shifted again and he looked at the curve of her hip. Well, slow_er_. As much as he hated it. And, do not doubt, he did hate it.

So what was this? Was it another freak mistake of theirs, a crack in the fissure of everything they had carefully orchestrated, this fake relationship? Because to be perfectly honest, he'd much rather go through a fake relationship and pretend not to be touched by all this than to skim the top of ecstasy for half a second and expose himself.

Well . . . no. That wasn't perfect honesty. She was his weakness; always had been. Since day one. Since minute one. Since freaking _second_ one.

_Shoulda fought harder, Mariano._

As he slid off his chair and onto the floor to rest his back against the sofa she was lying on, he thought it was ironic that he'd only started fighting once she was actually his. Crazy how some things worked out sometimes.

He was pretty much done fighting now. Or at least he wanted to believe he was. Absent-mindedly, he grabbed for the nearest book on the leaning coffee table and pried it open to the first page. _Nine Stories._ He must have read it, what, twelve times? Thirteen always had been a good number for him.

That last thought wouldn't stop bothering him. Was he really done fighting? He still felt that resistance in his bone marrow, not to her, God, _never_ to her, but to what she did to him. He wasn't the kind of guy who enjoyed being beaten to a pummel by a barely-five-foot-seven beauty who was so delicate she probably couldn't squash an earthworm. It kind of did something to his ego.

And yet he liked the benefits more.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. He tried to focus more diligently on the paragraph before him. _"There were ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and the way they were monopolizing the long distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon to almost . . ."_

When Rory woke up, the first thing she saw was Jess on the floor at her feet, scrawling some note in the margin of a very worn and tattered book. She smiled, breathing in the soft-page smell that had perforated the fabric of the sofa, along with a distinctly cigarette-like musk that made her feel warm and safe, as strange as it seemed. Sleepily, she watched him without saying anything, watched his concentration, how his golden eyes flicked across each sentence after he'd lifted his pen from the paper, the way he licked his bottom lip in contemplation.

The attack hit so suddenly that she didn't have time to prepare for it. It wasn't the violent, tissue-tearing sensation she usually got with him, but something sweeter, thicker, dreamier, like the fairy dust she used to believe in as a girl or feathery cotton candy. It took her a second to process it. She _wanted_ this. She wanted to wake up to him sitting there reading, and not just today, but everyday, tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that, until the second she died. And when she did die, she wanted it to be in his arms, her cheek against his chest, his chin on her forehead, their hands tangled together and the promise of a reunion on their lips. Because in that second, dying didn't seem like it'd be so bad if he was going to be there with her. In the matter of fact, she wondered if maybe this was what dying felt like, this out-of-yourself, otherworldly inability to touch anything on either side of life.

To her, he had always been forever.

When he had stood there behind the counter at Luke's, his gaze and his soul constantly darting toward the door, when he had warmed her skin with his breath and when he had broken her heart with words he didn't mean, when he had sat next to her on that bus and then disappeared into a sunset alone, leaving her in the dusk without him, when he had shown up on the doorstep of her dorm with lightning flashes in his eyes and words he didn't know what to do with, time after time after time, bitter mistake after bitter mistake after bitter mistake, empty chance after empty chance after empty chance, he had _always_ been forever.

God, that hurt. It hurt because she was only just realizing it now. It hurt because who was to say that it wasn't too late?

"Like what you see, Rory?" He asked lowly, without looking up even minutely in her direction, his gaze pinned exactly on his book. She let go of all the confusion she had been harboring within her and smiled shyly, blushing once again. He could always make her blush. Logan hadn't been able to do that.

Logan. His name coaxed no emotion from her anymore. Logan, Logan, Logan. Nothing. She tried to remember a time during the last few years when she had been able to do that with Jess' name, and couldn't.

"I was looking at the book," she said sleepily, knowing it was an awful excuse even as she used it. He glanced up with a raised eyebrow that said it all and slid the book back onto the coffee table, the pen being lost in one of his jean pockets.

"So . . . _Spinal Tap._ Not one of our best stay-awake ideas."

She shook her head. "Not ever a good idea. Why did I agree to watch it again?" He watched her stretch, mesmerized by the way a small strip of skin on her stomach showed taunt over her hip bone, and then realized that he definitely wasn't going to be able to allow himself to think like that. Not if he wanted to survive until tomorrow.

"Because we have approximately seven movies, two of which are Grand Canyon documentaries." He wished he was exaggerating, but he wasn't. Damn Matthew's obsession with documentaries. Who _liked_ documentaries, anyway? He was living with a freak. With a few freaks. Not that he had much choice; in Philadelphia, it was either the freak or the ax murder. Ha. That made him wonder which one he was.

"It's going off now," she announced, searching for the remote. The TV was in the room off of the staff-entry door, a ratty old room that they hadn't been able to fix up because of all the money they'd put in the main portion of the store. He looked down at the carpet and smirked as she tore apart the couch cushions.  
After he felt she had exhausted herself enough, he said quietly, "There's no remote."

She shot him a look, saw the amusement on his face, and stubbornly stood up to turn the TV off herself. Once vindicated, she tapped her feet impatiently on the carpet. "Do you have anything I could wear? For tonight?"

It was ten o'clock. He guessed that meant she wasn't going back to Stars Hollow just yet. He tried not to read too much into it, because that was dangerous. "I never thought you'd be so obsessed with my fashion choices."

He hadn't failed to notice how she had been studying him over the last few minutes since she had woken up. The electricity, crackling and sparking and arcing between them, was back. She'd brought it back. They had turned some point in the kitchen, but they weren't ready to admit it.

"I'm particularly fond of your socks," she said, looking pointedly at the holes where the skin of his foot showed through.

"Yes, well, what can I say? I like keeping old things around. Mr. Sentimental, in the flesh," he said sarcastically. The way she snorted in disbelief disturbed him a little more than it should have. "C'mon." Standing up, he proceeded to usher her out of the room, across the main Truncheon shop, and up the stairs. He felt her watching him again as he climbed in front of her.

_Stop playing with the flame, moth, unless you want it to play back._

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Once again safely enfolded in a pair of Jess' sweatpants and a spare T-shirt, a ritual that she was becoming deliciously addicted to after it had only been repeated once, Rory was on her knees in Jess' room, wondrously going through his books. How he had so many books was a mystery to her, no less opaque than the Holy Grail. He obviously had been in pretty deep financial straits for awhile that he was just recovering from, and there was no way he could have fit all of these into his canvas bag.

She hated thinking about that canvas bag. Shivers ran through her, and she had to force herself to remember what had occupied her mind before that. Books . . . right.

Anyway, somehow he had gotten mountains of books, a huge bookshelf packed to bursting, a desk covered, a bed layered with them. Titles she'd never heard of and titles she'd fallen in love with were all slammed together in this one thirteen-by-fifteen foot room.

It was probably, at this moment, her favorite place in the whole world. Everything about it dripped with Jess, from the Ramonesposter plastered on his ceiling to the piles of CDs in the corner to the messy organization of a stack of notebooks. In dripping Jess, it also attracted her, whether because of similarities or opposites she didn't know. She was willing to guess the former in this matter.

She saw a half-empty cigarette pack on the windowsill. Although she would never admit it to him, his smoking was something that made him irresistibly intoxicating to her. She had abhorred it before him, but that was before him. Before she saw him standing there, making each pull on the cigarette look like a work of art. Before she came to recognize the scent and associate it with everything else that was Jess.

"You . . . don't have a copy of your book up here?" She asked. She loved being able to say that. _Your book. Your book, your book, your book, your book . . ._

"No," he answered simply from where he was leaning against the closed door, still in jeans and a T-shirt. She followed the lines of the muscles in his arms.

"Why not?"

"Because." He shifted minutely. "I _wrote_ it. Why would I want to _read_ it?"

The argument made no sense to her, but she could tell it did to him, so she dropped the subject and traced her finger delicately over the edge of a particularly arresting Plath novel, almost afraid to touch it lest she should hurt it.

"It's like watching a love affair," he remarked evenly.

She wanted to say something but wasn't brave enough to, so she settled with, "If woman and book were allowed to be united by state, we'd have eloped a long time ago." She saw him cross the room out of the corner of her eye and go to sit on his bed, all without making a sound. She wondered what his life had been like for him to have to learn to walk like that, and shuddered.

Like he was a particularly strong magnet, she found herself straightening up with the book in her hands and following him. There were a lot of thoughts that sabotaged her with the idea of being on his bed, but most of them danced elusively on the corners of her mind, not really fixating themselves. She felt the softness of the mattress, the softness of the worn sheets, the softness of the blanket as she sat down.

It was doom, sitting down. They were still the same. It was still them. Absolute doom to sit down.

Resistance . . . what resistance? _Tell me, please, the point of resisting._ She couldn't. She'd tried and tried and tried, seen he was too intangible to hold onto, fought for something that fought her back, and it all came down to this, to being unable to get away from him, to being unable to not trust him, to believing that he really had changed and knowing that even if he hadn't she was hopeless. What a beautiful letdown.

This time was different than the kitchen. This was her baring the bruises he had inflicted upon her to him, allowing him to see the scars, becoming translucent even though he could read her already and making it impossible for him not to notice the pain. She looked at him with tortured eyes that were full of belief, belief in him and in them and in everything that could be and should be but hadn't been, reaching for him, grasping for him, pulling him in to her hard and fast and deep like an eruption of her soul.

The warning he silently gave her echoed off the walls: _Don't start this, Rory. Don't do this again. _She was moonlight to him, this dancing ethereal beauty that was there one second and gone the next, shining on the snow but impossible to touch. He couldn't take another damn rejection. He was broken and bleeding; one more would suffice to kill him. He despised being broken. Jess was not built to be broken. But then the scary thought came that maybe he was.

She was the one advancing on him now as he propped himself up against the wall that the bed was pushed against. Closer and closer she moved, each breath she breathed stirring a strand of hair that hung in her eyes, her ivory skin glowing in the faint light of the desk lamp.

Glassy pools of sky blue hazily confronted the piercing intensity of deepest bronze. She was afraid of the tumultuous emotions that he was resurrecting in all their former glory, but she was also desperately addicted. The newness was still there, the adventure, the _need_. But something was missing. The innocence, maybe? It was all sadness now, sadness and something that tasted very much like relief. Or maybe hope.

He was fighting again. Damn all this fighting. Let the fighting go to hell.

But he couldn't. He cared about her too much. After all this time, after everything, after the exclamation of "No!" bouncing around in his head for months and months, he still cared. A lot.

"Rory," he said huskily, his voice making the hair on the back of her neck tingle. She was almost sitting on him now. She looked up at him, confused but knowing what was coming. "If . . . if you decide . . . Don't run away from me again," he commanded. He was sick and tired of the circle and he was calling it off. This was either the end or the beginning, and nothing in the middle. At least that's what he told himself. Deep in his ribcage somewhere he knew that if she wanted it to be something in the middle, he would let it be something in the middle.

A moment of silence. One breath, and then another. He could hear the bulb in the desk lamp buzzing and a radio on in a room down the hall.

Truth? What was truth? _This is truth._

She couldn't make a noise with her throat, so she just nodded. She should have made him promise not to run, either. She should have. But she didn't.

This kiss was never under the disguise of being sweet or tender. It was a battle, an all out release, two enemies meeting for war to realize that they had both wanted the same thing since the beginning. Deeper and deeper until the words physical contact didn't apply any more; it was a union of souls. He pushed and she took, they went to the brink, and he lost all coherent thought as he allowed himself to plunge headlong into the chasm. Attraction as old as time itself forcefully and painfully jabbed at them, tying them together as if with rope, as they tried their best to make up for the last two years in two minutes.

He held a power over her that should have been dissected and studied as an alternate electricity source, it was so strong. Seventeen or twenty, he was the same, he was Jess, he was her drink, her substance, the one temptation she could never resist, the doom she had seen coming on the horizon and welcomed with open arms. He leaned her down against the mattress, supporting himself on his forearms, punishing her for waiting so long to come to him and rewarding her for finally coming after all.

_This . . . this . . . you . . . this . . ._ Never, not once, had she ever experienced anything as insanely mind-blowing as this, as him. It literally took her to a place where colors blended and she lost control, the ship going down without its captain, the car wrecking without her even trying to put on the brakes. Terrified, bold, everything all at once and then nothing, because there was too much to be anything. Fireworks, explosions, atom bombs.

She wasn't ready for this, but who was she to stop it? You could waste your whole life waiting to be ready.  
His hands were on the hem of her shirt, his thumbs sliding beneath the fabric and caressing the skin of her stomach. That was when it was all went fuzzy and she melted into him, into the cigarette and aftershave smell, into his T-shirt and into his tangle of hair and into his eyes. Always, always into his eyes.

He knew he should stop. He knew that this was the very anti-definition of slow.

He knew, but he didn't follow through.

He was touching the delicate curve of her side now, stroking the arch of her back as he slipped his fingers between her and the bed, pressing himself against her and feeling every shape of her body fit into his like puzzle pieces, every bruised portion of his heart showing itself again.

_"In the air, on top of a tram, a girl is sitting. Her dress, lifted a little, blows out. But a block in the traffic separates us. The tramcar glides away, fading like a nightmare."_

Skin, skin, skin, heat, unbearable heat, flames licking at his body. This was what he had been waiting for, this was his epiphany, his heavenly revelation. He hadn't been able to touch a woman without guilt for two years, hadn't been able to allow himself peace and bliss and ecstasy that made his blood boil. He had never felt the divineness of perfection, not before her and not after her. Just during her.

It was kind of like the exhilarating feeling of coming home after he had been away for a long, long time.

She pushed her body up against his, her fingers threading through his hair and then along the sinewy muscles of his arms, splaying across his chest, everywhere and nowhere at once, which drove him crazy.

_"My death and life,  
__My bane and antidote,  
are both before me."_

He was pulling at her bra before he realized altogether what was happening. Shivering and quaking and almost crying, she looked up at him when she felt him hesitate, confusion, need, desire.

He leaned back, his breathing torn and ragged, his hands still underneath her shirt, his knee pressed on her thigh. She feebly pulled at him, wanting him, needing him and her and nothing else, nothing more than this tiny room with this tiny bed, feeling the heat radiating from his body and jealously wishing it was against her. _Do you want me?_ It was what she was asking without saying anything, unable to speak.

"We . . . can't . . . now . . . yet," he heaved, moving one hand up to touch her face, to outline her nose and cheeks and eyebrows and mouth. She closed her eyelids softly, reveling, almost dying from how gentle he was being, not understanding what he was saying.

"Yes," was all she managed to get out at first, but she tried again when she looked up and saw everyone unspoken apology, every word of adoration he had never been able to give, every dream he had ever had for them all broken in his eyes. It was so much she had to look away in the beginning, but then she matched him straight on, waiting for him to understand that she was plagued, too. "Now . . . please?"

It was the 'please' that threw him. There was begging in her like he'd never seen before in another woman. It was not lustful or carnal, but desperate, passionate, final. He was shaking. Dammit. He'd never shaken before. He touched her hair like it was gold and her skin like it was alabaster, afraid that his blackened hands would leave imprints on her.

"Rory, I . . ." He looked at his room, at the bottle of beer that had been on his desk since before he left to go to New Haven, at the mounds of books and the carton of cigarettes and the stains on the walls. And that thought that he had been a victim of all their teenage years hit him again: _she deserves better._

She answered his unspoken concern with a kiss, a shy but determined one that made him pull back almost instantly once it started because it would spell the end for him. He examined her carefully, studying the perfect petite hands, the curving legs, the graceful neck. "You can't do that," he groaned very quietly when she pressed her lips to his jawbone. "Not fair."

"Not supposed to be," she answered, pulling at the hair on the base of his neck, trying to go over what he had just admitted almost accidentally to her: he couldn't resist her. He didn't have to say it. He didn't even have to tell her how he felt again, not after that winter day, because _she knew_. She had no idea why the road to where they were now had been so long and mangled.

He caught her hands from where they were now feeling the cut of his abdomen under his T-shirt and lowered them gently against her side, looking at her with hard eyes that were weighing a thousand things at once. "We aren't ready," he stated firmly, staring down from his upheld position over her.

"I am." There was just as little room for argument in her tone as his, and they were clashing head to head again like they always had before.

He gently touched the bruise on her collarbone, stroking it with his thumb until she thought she was going to die. His lips grazed the purpled skin and then the diamond paths of tears that were slipping down her cheeks like rain on a windowpane.

"You're not," he said softly. He knew how he wanted it to be between them, how it could be between them. He understood her innocence in the area, even after . . . what had happened with . . . with Dean . . . But he wouldn't think about that just now. Yes, he could almost taste her innocence, and she had no idea how wonderful it could be, how he could make her _feel._

"Jess, I -"

"I'll wait for you." The words were so quiet that she almost didn't hear them at first, but eventually they made impact. Her heart was destroyed.

"Okay," she whispered, moving over to make room for him on the bed. He kissed her throbbing temple, her cheek, and then finally her mouth before lying motionless next to her, holding her, feeling each beat of her pulse. Fate, destiny, inevitability, call it what it must be called, but it was, and always had been, Rory and Jess.

_"I give you my hand!  
__I give you my love more precious than money,  
__I give you myself before preaching or law;  
__Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?  
__Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He admired her sleeping form in the darkness, nothing but a shadow as she curled toward where his body had been minutes before, hair spilled behind her and fingertips dangling off the edge of the bed. It was cool outside, but she was beneath the comforter so he didn't feel too guilty about opening the window a crack to smoke without disturbing her.

Taking another drag, he watched the red glow of the cigarette end as it flared and then dimmed. Unashamedly, he continued to stare and tried to grasp the meaning of the term beautiful, beautiful in its purest and saddest form.

If he were to be perfectly honest, he'd imagined a thousand different scenarios that could have taken place instead of the one that had just played out. Mostly, they involved tangled bed sheets and doe eyes and the color white (for some reason, layers and layers of white). He imagined her body like one of those Hindi goddesses, the religion Jack Kerouac found so enthralling. Then there were the noises he wondered if she would make, if he could make her scream into an empty apartment, if he could define places for her she didn't even know existed. He was pretty sure he could. But he hadn't.

This cigarette was being smoked with the ritual of a post-sex cigarette. He'd always smoked post-sex cigarettes. At first it was just a habit, because he hadn't tasted the guilt. After Rory, in California, he'd tasted the guilt. So he tried to drown the guilt with nicotine.

Now he wasn't sure why he was smoking it. There had been no sex. There was no guilt. The room was heavy with something sweet and weighted, like incense, pressing down on his lungs.

When he glanced over at her again, he felt the post-letdown sadness that was all too familiar dripping through his veins. She always made him feel like this now, with all of this regret, this hard, suffocating regret, making a prison around him out of the what-might-have-beens. The what-could-still-bes were almost hurting him worse.

She was like moonlight. He had been trying to grasp her for years, but she slipped through his fingers right when he thought he finally could hold her. _Come on, asshole_, he brooded, remembering her wild eyes and her burgundy nail polish from that morning, _you're the one that no one can hold onto._

He flung his cigarette out the window, watching as the orange was extinguished when it met with the ground, and lit up another one. She shifted in her sleep, reaching for him unconsciously, and he stared as she curled up tighter upon finding he was not there. He was lost, dammit, in some kind of trance that had to do with the steady rhythm of her breathing, her eyelids fluttering, her lips moving without sound as if she were trying to whisper a dream to him.

Heaven was not Jess Mariano's home. Never had been. But right now, he thought that maybe this was a kind of heaven, and perhaps he could finally be happy in it. The idea of spending the rest of forever watching her sleep didn't seem like an awful one.

_Maybe this time . . ._

His unfinished cigarette was balanced, still burning, in his fingertips.

_" . . . it had become indispensable to him to have her face pressed close to him; he could never let her go again. He could never let her head go away from the close clutch of his arm. He wanted to remain like that for ever, with his heart hurting him in a pain that was also life to him."_


	23. Chapter 23

**Author's Note:** I've been kind of putting off posting this chapter because I was a little worried about how it would be received, but I can't wrap up this story unless I put up another chapter (obviously) so here it is. Some more drama . . . and then the drama's over for _Redemption _and there is only one more installment I'm going to make. I'm already starting the sequel, so . . . if you'd like to see it posted, let me know. I've already gotten some feedback on the subject and am looking for more. Have a good reading :)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The noise was not something she was used to in the morning, but she had always been a heavy sleeper, so it didn't affect her very much at first. Horns, shouts, dogs, cars, planes, everything, blurred and swirled into a distant, constant hum, fading into background noise. She had been exhausted last night from an emotional turmoil even more agonizing than her physical weariness, and she slept for hours, skimming the light, airy ends of surface dreams that were full of cigarette smoke and gold-flecked eyes and books.

Eventually, though, a particularly rude siren jarred her awake. It was strange how she didn't feel out of place or lost when she woke up, but at home, comfortable, even _safe_. She knew immediately that he was not in the room with her, just as she knew she had ten fingers and ten toes. The mattress beside her was cold. She remembered falling asleep in some sort of haze, dimly feeling like she was melting into water in the arms of a memory. It was reassurance, it was beauty, and she missed it, wondering how long he had been gone.

She slipped out from under the sheet, feeling almost pretty despite her rumpled hair, the crinkled T-shirt, and the sleep still in her eyes. Half of her was afraid that he had left, but she told herself he hadn't gone far. He couldn't have. _I'll wait for you . . ._ Four words, the ones she was jealously guarding in her heart like a van Gogh, ones that spoke of promise and maybe, just maybe, redemption.

She wasn't sure who needed forgiveness more. He had hurt her unquestionably and deeply, dozens of times, but she was not the innocent passerby that everyone saw. Leaving him to drown in his own fear of commitment, refusing to tell him how she felt, skirting the issues, denying him, making him think his word was worth nothing to her . . . and then perhaps the darkest sin of all: lying. Lying, lying, lying, so much lying, lying until she felt overwhelmed by all of the things she had to pretend were real.

_"Only say no if you don't want to be with me."_

_"No!"_

Pressing her lips together so hard that they almost bled, she unfolded her clothes from where they had been neatly kept on the corner of his desk. She loved his desk. It was warped with age, obviously on its fourth or fifth go-around, stained with ink across the top and paint peeling off of its wooden drawers by the floor. He had papers spread across it like a mosaic, a few sharpened pencils flung up near a stack of books, and a faded lamp swiveled so it pointed straight at where a thick notebook packed with loose papers had been left. A couple of CDs crowned with his pack of cigarettes gave it that distinct air he always had about him that was so intoxicating.

She changed before she had much of a chance to think about what she was going to do throughout the day. Because this, she knew, was _the_ day, the deciding factor which would script what the past twenty-four hours had meant for them. She could do what she had done before, what he had taught her how to do, take all of the precious memories and wrap them inside of her like presents, jealously and only for herself, before vanishing, leaving nothing to suggest what had been. She almost felt like she had a right to do it after California. After how he left.

But that was stupid and she knew it, because she would be as effectually killing herself as him, and it wasn't what she wanted. Not anymore. The bitterness for revenge, something she hadn't even thought about but had been there nonetheless, was a torment that she had to be through with. What she didn't know was how hard she could hold on. If bitterness was no longer a part of this, neither was fooling herself. They were different but the same and she didn't understand exactly what that would mean. It made her chest ache.  
Jess, Jess, Jess. She had a crazy desire to fog up the window with her breath and spell his name into the steam. Jess, Jess . . . from the first second. She hated how it had taken her three years to admit what he had accepted in three minutes.

But Jess was Jess and she was not. She couldn't always be as brave as he was.  
When she slipped down the stairs with her clothes from yesterday on and her hair restyled in the best attempt she could give, Truncheon was running smoothly. She skirted around a small knot of three or four people that were admiring the books on the bookshelves and searched the main room for him, unable to dispel the historic fear that he was gone. That was silly. He wouldn't leave his own home, would he? But then again, he didn't really have a home, it seemed.

She finally spotted him in a corner, trying to help a middle-aged woman who seemed interested in purchasing one of the contemporary paintings that Truncheon advertised for the local artists. He was getting exasperated, obviously, because he kept running a hand through his hair, but his face was a study in emotional detachment. He caught her eye over the woman's head, raising an eyebrow with a "shoot-me-please" smirk that seemed cocky and addictingly enticing at the same time.

He nodded at some question that was posed to him, shook his head a second later, and wrapped it up with an apparently monosyllabic statement. She remembered that when she was younger, it had been moments like these that melted her heart and reshaped it into a shrine for him, moments when they were sharing something special even though they weren't using words.

Moving closer, she caught their conversation. "Do you think this artist might complete a personal portrait on request?" Something about the woman reminded her sharply of her grandmother, except for the loafers. Emily Gilmore would be shot before being caught in loafers.

She tried to think of what sarcastic comeback Jess had construed in his mind the moment the question was asked. _Just make sure you get him plastered before you ask him to paint you. _Yes, that definitely had a Jessesque aroma about it. She covered her lips with her hand to keep from giggling too obviously.

"I'm not sure. You'd have to ask him about it, which is why I _gave you his number_," he emphasized, attempting to slip away. Rory wondered if it could be like this daily, this raw need to be near each other simmering between them, if it could last forever. A glimmer of dread flashed through her heart.

"Yes. Well. Are you sure this is still the number he uses?" The note in the woman's voice was almost high and nasally. She probably had a name like Biddie. In response, Jess simply shrugged.

"I guess I could just go to another store . . ." Biddie trailed off, trying to work some sort of reaction out of him, which, of course, didn't work, because he didn't really care. He nodded.

"Yes, you could do that . . . And if someone just wanted to go into the kitchen," he continued, looking pointedly at Rory, "They would find mediocre coffee in a degrading mug that definitely does not belong to me."

She smiled shyly at him and nodded, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. A faint, "Oh . . . hmm . . . interesting," of Biddie's reached her as she wove around Leo and through the hallway. Sunlight threw a pattern of squares onto the floor by the stove, and, as promised, a cup of coffee in a Power Rangers mug was waiting for her on the table. Something about it just looked so perfect, so everything she had ever wanted, the harmony of skin still warm from sleep and coffee and sunshine and books, that it made her feel almost deliriously happy.

_". . . the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed."_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It could become a ritual: her morning coffee, his morning cigarette. He had left his pack upstairs, though, so instead he stood by her and watched her as she finished her third cup, pouring over a newspaper that he'd stolen off the steps next door (at around fucking five in the morning) so that she would have something to read that didn't have the name "Jess Mariano" stamped on it. Not that he didn't want her to read his book, but the idea of having to watch her as she did was pretty much unbearable. He'd reread _The Subsect_ once, and only once, since it was printed and felt sickened when he realized all of the amateur mistakes he hated in works he proofread were present in his own. He would burn them all and start over if he could, but unfortunately they were already on a couple of inconspicuous bookshelves in a few well-hidden bookstores. At least that comforted him, the hidden and inconspicuous parts.

He noticed that she folded the top corner of the thin page as she read it, fiddling with it, moving it back and forth because her hands could never be still. That was a habit he had, too, he remembered, looking down to where he was idly twisting a spoon across the spaces between his fingers. He felt her glance up at him and then back down to the world section. After what had happened last night, he wasn't sure what to say, so he remained silent.

Every fiber of his being had wanted to stay with her, to hold her and watch her as she woke up. It was something he'd never been given the privilege of before, something he had told himself over and over and over again that he had no right to even want. Maybe that was it. Maybe he didn't feel like he had the right. Because of course, he didn't.

But hell, if he was only going to do what he h ad the right to, he wasn't going to get very far.

They were going to have to get a hold on this sometime. Either they would be forever running in opposite directions, tearing at each other, seeking the other's blood as payment for what should be but couldn't be, or they had to learn to run in the same direction. They were going to run, whatever the outcome would be. That was the kind of people they were. He was more restless, shapeless, rootless, but she, too, couldn't wait forever. At least not alone.

He glanced at the stomach-turning titles splashed across the front page. "What a crazy world we live in, huh?" No, frigging small talk had never been his forte. It was even less so now that he hadn't practiced in so long, but he was willing to humiliate himself this much for _her_. Ironic how some things just didn't change.

"Yes," she agreed, the look on her face explaining quite plainly that she was not thinking of George Bush or the president of Iran or Mongolia's recent famine. Maybe it was Malaysia. He always got Malaysia and Mongolia screwed up.

What now? Was he supposed to say something about the weather? No. That was where he drew the line. What he wanted to say was just the blunt, open-faced question: _Where do you wanna go from here, Rory?_ However, he dismissed that idea without any further thought, because he was still Jess and he hid everything. Being cryptic was a need of his, just under breathing at least five times a minute and just above verbally ripping apart Taylor's revolting cardigans whenever he happened to be in Stars Hollow.

Dammit. He really wasn't good at this.

"Do you own a copy of _The Scarlet Letter_?" She asked randomly, gazing at him with her Atlantis eyes as she set the newspaper down. He wondered if she was going to avoid _the_ topic for as long as possible, like before. With Rory, they could be stuck at this spot in no man's land for months. He watched her cheeks pinken when she realized how fixedly he was staring at her, and he thought, _well, at least the view's good._

"Nope. Not really into the self-torturing movement."

They were sinking back into comfortable territory. He didn't want to be comfortable anymore. "Not a lover of Nate, hmm?" She asked, annoyingly using a pet nickname for Nathaniel Hawthorne, just like she did for almost every author. He was a little bit disturbed to realize he had missed that.

"I'm not applying for fan club president," he said noncommittally, allowing himself to remember the kiss they had shared on his bed last night. He'd never kissed like that with anyone else. Once, she'd gotten him to take her out to a taco fast food place when they were eighteen, and she'd made kissing in the waiting line a frigging religious experience, despite the moldy burrito on the floor. Because of kissing her upstairs, he'd basically made his bedroom hallowed ground. He wondered if he'd feel guilty smoking in it from now on.

"He _was_ a male chauvinist pig," she admitted, smiling slightly as a mischievous gleam shone in her eyes. He knew what was coming. "But noth –"

"-ing compared to Ernest," he finished for her, crossing his arms and studying her cheekbones like they were painted by Rembrandt or sculpted by Michelangelo. She raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

"How did you know I was going to –"

"Take advantage of any opportunity to exploit my favorite author? I have no idea," he answered dryly, putting the spoon back on the counter and unashamedly continuing his exploration of her face. She had changed a little, maybe. Her eyes were sadder. He remembered noticing that when he had seen her in Stars Hollow a couple of months ago.

"You know, _you _probably have fan clubs all over the Internet now." She was flirting. He recognized that and it made him grin, the idea that she still thought she had to flirt with him. She had no work left to do, nothing to attempt to achieve. He was done for, _fin_, glued, almost in a_ From Here to Eternity_ way, and he hated it. Or at least he used to. He was getting adjusted to it now.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. An author like you, with a book like that –"

He shook his head. "You haven't even read my book yet," he reminded her, but she didn't look at all at a loss by that fact and shrugged it off as if it were of no importance.

"But _you_ wrote it." It was like she thought she was telling him something as indisputable as the fact that the earth was round or the oceans were deep or the sun was hot. Her voice had that "duh" tone she employed on him on many occasions.

"Jeez, Rory, you've been downstairs all of what, twenty minutes? Stop with the insults, already," he said, turning to find a Coke. He heard her laugh, a distinctly Rory laugh that he held above all other sounds, and when he looked at her, her eyes glittered and danced.

"You make me happy," she murmured quietly.

Little hot blades started to dance down his back. He glanced up at her in surprise, never expecting to hear that sentence, not after _everything_, and the waves that were sent through him told him just how much he had wanted those words to fall from her lips. This, the publishing house, the book, the stupid paintings and the damn printers, were all, in some small part or another, meant to make her happy.

She blushed, like she hadn't meant to say it out loud, but she could find no words to dismiss it. He wasn't one for the corny "you-make-me-happy-too" line. She had to know she did. He simply nodded. "Good."

It was a sudden change that he didn't quite understand when he saw how her eyes lit with that deer-in-the-headlights look, the fear that washed through her expression. He had seen it many times and recognized it as easily as he recognized her. It was the first stage in her departure, the original declaration that she was about to run. His stomach clenched like it was suddenly made of iron. _Don't run. Don't run from us, not now, make this time different._

"I . . . I need to get home," she stammered awkwardly, the coffee forgotten next to her, her heart pounding like it had been shocked. A realization had just hit her, a terrifying one. She was falling again. She was falling not just for the old Jess that she still adored, but for the new one, in a stronger way than ever before, than ever construed humanly possible. In twenty-four hours, she had let him in as deeply as he had ever been, and last time he'd been there, he'd torn her apart.

This had gone too far. Who had she been kidding to think that they could ever work? They were Rory and Jess, as ill-fated as Romeo and Juliet. She had forgotten that for a short time. Her practical streak was back the second she admitted that he was making her happy, because that was when she understood how short-lived this was. How inconsistent. If she stayed here any longer, the new Jess and the old Jess would blend to make the Jess she had always known was there, and she'd never be able to leave, no matter what he did to her.

He nodded slowly. He would not ask her to stay. She knew that about him as well as she knew that his favorite color was red and he never could sleep through a whole night and he wore cologne that was so light she only smelled it when he was holding her. He said nothing.

"I mean, Lane . . ." She offered weakly, begging him to understand with her gaze, but he stubbornly would not meet her eyes. She knew he understood, though, all too well. His face remained expressionless. It was the way they did these things.

"There's a bus that goes to Hartford in an hour or so," he said monotonously. She couldn't blame him for not bringing her back. Her impulsiveness had brought her here, not him, and now it was taking her away. A small voice in her chest made her hate her fear, but it had only been a matter of time until it caught up with her. She remembered the diner yesterday morning, with the pancakes and cigarette and coffee. She wished things could be like that all the time.

She didn't reply and looked back down at the paper. It didn't hold her interest anymore. He captivated her as surely in her agony as in her delight that had vanished in a second. _I've tried to get over you_, she told him silently, watching as he scuffed the toe of his black shoe into the floor, his hands in the pockets of his navy jacket. _Maybe I can't._

"I've got to . . . " He gestured back out to the store, his eyes hard and dark and devoid of all the comfort and vulnerability that had been there. They had melded again. She couldn't forget that. She couldn't forget the passion-drenched feeling that was threatening to kill her.

She thought that it was for the best. She really did. That she was saving them both by awaking from this deliciously dangerous relapse. Stupid girl. Her thought process remained intact for about nine seconds, and then he stood up. He stood up to leave and terror clawed at her, because she knew he would disappear out some back door and she would get on a bus and they might never see each other again.

That knowledge, the bitter knowledge that they would vanish and then haunt each other's lives, after everything, after all the corners that had turned in the past twenty-four hours, over the past three years, was the closest to dying she had ever been. And all of the sudden him tearing her apart inside didn't seem like the worst thing that could happen anymore. The worst thing was him leaving her the way she was, leaving her untouched, because he had branded her as his and she could not ignore the searing sting that was Jess.

The safe road wasn't the right one anymore! It never had been. He looked at her once and made it almost to the door. What the hell was she doing? _What did she want?_

A beat, a second, two years narrowed into a breath, impatience, frustration . . .

And then she knew. She had always known. Her mind was made up and it was finished. She had to bare her skin to the blade rather than kill herself of suffocation. _She wanted him, in all of his tangled splendor, in his brokenness and barrenness, because all of his empty spaces fit into hers. For the first time, she wanted to want him._

"Jess," she murmured harshly, desperately. "Don't."

She saw behind the wall he put up around his heart, the one that used to house a beautiful broken boy, and now there was a man. The boy had gone. The man was still just as beautiful, but there was no façade. He wasn't going to pretend. Somewhere beyond the burn inside of her, she was proud of him, a kind of painful pride that hurt.

"What?" He seemed so very, very tired.

"Don't go," she said, knowing she had no right to ask but knowing he would forgive her anyway.

The look he gave her reflected her pleading right back upon her. A tear hit the table. He hated that he always ended up making her cry. A silent second filled with a hundred pleadings, ones that he thought were telling him that all he had to do was convince her to stay and she would, but he didn't want to have to convince her.

"You can't drag me around like this, Rory," he said quietly, his eyes penetrating, the noise from the city fading away like it was white, his body aching. This was not _him_, this groveling shadow of a person, not anymore. He had changed, and she couldn't do this to him. She couldn't come back and destroy everything he had made for himself.

She couldn't form words that could express emotions this deep. "I . . . I . . ."

"I can't . . . we can't keep doing this. I can't be your rebound guy," he went on, almost angrily. Two years of believing that things could be different if only he was given the chance, and that hope was being crumpled like paper. "I'm not the Marius to your Cosette, the Jake to your Brett, your Ethan Frome, any form of Linton . . ." The bitterness in his voice as he spewed off literary couples made her cringe. He saw it, but all sympathy was dredged out of him.

"Don't do that," she said weakly. "Don't bring books into this."

His sardonic laugh was harsh and hurt his throat. The fact that she cared more about the books than the sentiments he was uncharacteristically expressing was just too orchestrated.

"Leo will tell you where the bus station is," he said, glancing at her for a final moment in her beauty and, for the first time, really not liking her for it. The stupid, immature part of him added, "Tell Logan not to worry, that nothing happened between us."

Anger flared in her eyes and he knew he shouldn't have mentioned Logan at all. He moved to walk away. "No! You don't get to say something like that and then leave," she spat, standing up with crossed arms. "Don't talk about Logan. Logan has nothing to do with this. There _is _no Logan."

There was nothing he could say to that, but in a fight, he couldn't allow himself to be beaten. If they were going to do this and he had to go down, he was going to go down with his pride still intact. It was a fatal flaw of his. "You're still getting over that jerk just like –"

"You have no right! Absolutely no right! Why do you think I'm _here_?"

Silence. Heavy breathing. He couldn't look away from her, she was a magnet, she was his doom, his end, and she was it for him. "Why _are_ you here?" He asked, his voice suddenly softer, the anger not gone but faded, the old feelings he could never stop eating through him again.

She shook her head and looked down at the floor. He should have known she couldn't say it. He waited for a second, two seconds, maybe ten years, a timeless eternity, and then started to turn away again.

_" . . . the moment it comes time to act, this paralysis, scared . . . nothing frightens them more than what they _want . . ."

"Because I need you," she whispered, her words as fragile as a petal in the rain. He didn't move. The world seemed suddenly to be made of glass and he stilled, disbelieving, unwilling to even as much as hope. "It's . . . it's over for me. You hurt me, again and . . . again and _again_, but I'm . . . I . . . I can't help it. I don't want to help it." Her voice was almost incoherent. He felt what she said more than he heard it, a delicate frozen web in the space between them. He forgot to breathe.

Afraid because she knew she was forsaking herself, because she knew that she had finally crossed the point of no return, that all of her previous noble intentions had evaporated and she was waiting for him to carry them back to the beginning, she stood there and watched his back straighten like a crowbar, his head bent in contemplation. It wasn't like both of them hadn't known about the irresistible pull between them, but this was the first time it was sketched with words. It seemed big and shadowed and lovely, lovely despite all of its problems and all of the pain it caused them.

He turned around and stared at her with an intensely focused and piercing expression for a long, drawn out moment that might have lasted several lifetimes. He was being drowned in the apex of his emotional turmoil, in relief, in torture, in regret . . . so many things he had always understood but never abandoned himself to were leading an insurrection in his body.

Sweet but bitter and with a burn, like bourbon, he thought disconnectedly as he kissed her. He tasted her tears and her sadness, as tantalizing as sex, as magnificent as heaven.

He finally spoke the words that she had been waiting for, that covered every sin and every transgression, that had to be ripped from his very soul. "I'm sorry," he whispered against her lips, and the second it was out, he knew that it had been the burden he'd needed to shrug off of his shoulders for years, the one he had been fleeing from but running to at the same time.

She didn't even think about asking him if he meant it. She knew he did.

_"He never intended to love her. But now it was over. He had crossed over the gulf to her, and all that he had left behind had shrivelled and become void."_


	24. Chapter 24

**Author's Note:** So, this is it. The last chapter. I don't want this story to be over; I've fallen in love with writing it! But all things must come to an end, and I have an idea this has gone on for far too long anyway, so here we go.

Since this is the last chapter, I'd really appreciate reviews from everyone, whether you've been consistent before or not, whether on this particular chapter or the complete story as a whole. I am currently writing the sequel, as in I took a break from doing so just to post this one, so we'll see if it gets on Fan Fiction or not. To those of you who have reviewed consistently, it really, really helped me and meant a lot to me, and I hope to do the same for you in your stories. Enjoy it.

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She didn't want to go. The acrid smell of buses at the bus station, all parked in one heaping mass of steaming, boiling metal, made her stomach turn and burned her tongue. He was standing next to her, not touching her with his hands but with everything else, his hip pressed against hers, his arm brushing her shoulder.

"I can drive you back," he said for the twentieth time, even though they both knew he couldn't. He had a meeting with a new printer today, one that Matthew would castrate him for if he missed it, regardless of how intimidating he was. He had a life to lead now, a life he couldn't just walk away from whenever he felt like it if he had any hope of retaining it.

"You have to work," she reminded him needlessly, loving that she could say that to him even if she wanted nothing more than the beauty of him and his car. Stanley, she remembered with a smile, melting with the pavement like yesterday.

He nodded and fell silent as they stood waiting for the bus to start admitting its passengers. Hesitantly, for the first time in a very long time, she reached her fingers up to run through the tangles of his midnight hair. He glanced over at her in surprise as she drew her hand back.

"I'll . . . I'll come see you again?" She asked, as if he dictated every move she made. Something had changed between them in the kitchen, and now the road before them looked terrifying and exciting but bright with promise, instead of dark with inevitable doom. She was different and he was different, maybe in just the right way for things to work this time. She was going to try. She was going to fight to hang onto him, because she couldn't imagine ever living without him now that she had found him again.

"Of course. Who wouldn't want to come back to charming Philly?" He was being only half-sarcastic, because whether he liked it or not, he was a man of the city and the city suited him. He liked the namelessness of it, how you were simply one face in a thousand that no one could ever remember, a mindless somebody walking around with a life and a history and a dream no one knew anything about. He liked how he and Rory could melt into the crowd with the beautiful commodity of privacy that was so undervalued in Stars Hollow, how they could have a conversation without a whole medical experiment of a town leaning toward them with their damn hands cupped around their ears. Perhaps that was part of what would make it . . . he didn't know, better? No, not better . . . purer . . . this time.

She smiled, a distracted smile that told him she wasn't thinking about Philly at all, not really. He immediately knew her silent question without her asking it. "I'll come see you, too," he said nonchalantly, as if he were speaking about the Californian current or ice caps or the price of a pair of flip flops, but her eyes instantly lit up and he understood it meant the world to her. Yale wasn't really his style, and Stars Hollow was one hell of a whack job, but for her he'd do it all over again, probably in a damn clown suit if she asked him to.

She raised herself up a minute amount on her toes and pressed her lips to his. It wasn't so much of a desirous kiss, or even a boiling kiss, but a soft, sweet, thank you kiss. It made him think of music notes and fountain pens and flower petals, and it left him in a half-delirious state that he hadn't been in in awhile. He took a deep breath and grinned, a slow, easy grin which only a very, very select amount of people (one) could attest to ever having seen.

"Thank you for having me," she murmured shyly as the bus to Hartford started to load. He put a hand on either side of her face, threading through her soft brown hair, amazed at how real and tangible it was between his fingers.

"Try not to be so much trouble next time, okay?" He joked huskily, feeling how her warm breath hit the middle of his neck every time she exhaled. For half of a crazy, partially insane second, he attempted to find something with which he could convince her to stay. She'd be allowed to read whatever book she wanted, or have the entire upstairs to herself, or maybe the moon? He wasn't sure. But then he got a hold of himself and remembered that she had to go, that she had to get back to school, and that they were going to have to get used to this since . . . he felt a little shaky even thinking it . . . since they were trying again. Or at least that seemed to be the unspoken consensus.

"Okay," she agreed. Her eyes darted to the doors of the bus and she looked back at him pleadingly, his thoughts reflected with absolute perfection in her face.

"Rory," he warned gently, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and feeling the shape of her cheekbone with his thumb, "You have to go. Yale. Remember Yale?"

"Yale who?" She asked a little desperately, causing him to smirk and his insides to viciously wrench at the same time.

"Funny, Gilmore. Really funny."

She looked down to the concrete floor beneath them and he followed her gaze, to where the edge of her heel barely was avoiding a wad of purple gum. Long, drawn out goodbyes were not them, never had been, and anything eloquent that could have been said at that particular moment was communicated between their eyes, silently, which somehow made it better. All of the sudden, the smelling, hot, sticky bus garage seemed like the only place in the universe he wanted to be. His throat became tight.

"I feel like something out of Margaret Mitchell," he said nervously as she still hesitated to leave. She smiled. It felt natural and normal, being like this again, but at the same time, it was uncharted territory once more because they were unpredictable. They reacted together like two halogens thrown in the same room, with fire and sparks and explosions, completely at random.

"Was that your attempt at being romantic?" She asked, grinning. He studied her penetratingly, a half tender smirk on his face, if there was such a thing, and the cautiousness in his eyes was gone.

"Maybe."

"You're horrible at it."

Carefully entwining his fingers with hers, he muttered, "I know."

She wanted to say something, he could tell, but she didn't. They were still playing on the edges, being very wary not to knock their fragile relationship off its orbit, knowing that one wrong word could send the other running with nothing but a shattered dream to evidence of what had been.

_Or could it?_

He wasn't so sure words could separate them anymore. Maybe they never had.

The announcing system made the final call for the Hartford bus but neither moved. She touched the patch on his sleeve with an almost melancholy remembrance, but a smile made her face innocently lovely once more. "Give me the book in your pocket," she said steadily, her stare fixed on him. "I know you brought me a copy."

Wordlessly, he pulled out an unblemished print of _The Subsect_ from the folds of his jacket and held it out to her. She took it, momentarily traced her index finger over his name on the cover, and gave him a pointed look that was meant to tell him to walk with her to the bus door, which he did.

She was half way up the steps before she turned around one last time. "Call me," she demanded, pleading and determination and fear, so much fear, etched in her blue eyes as they blistered him.

He had to stop himself from automatically coming in after her, and instead he leaned against the open door. "I'll call you." She searched his face and he felt it, his heart breaking for how hard she had to work to make herself trust him. Didn't she understand that . . . Dammit. He could write it out on paper but not put it into words.

"Rory," he said, returning her searing gaze with his own. "I'll call you."

She nodded and some of the worry was eased by her expression, replaced by . . . what? A nameless emotion, something like excitement but almost sacred, and it made his stomach clench in a way that finally spoke of tomorrow instead of yesterday. If they were really going to do the _Gone with the Wind _thing, she should stop midstep and fly back down into his arms for another burning kiss before being wrenched to her seat by the bus driver. However, they weren't like that, so instead he read something like need in the desire in her eyes and it was enough for him. "Goodbye, Rory," he said jokingly, calling back on a distant memory that he hadn't allowed himself to uncover for years.

"'Bye, Jess," she answered, smiling, because they both knew what they had known on that day in New York nearly four years ago: it wasn't goodbye, not even close, more like the exact opposite. He, never able to stay and watch her leave, turned around and faded into the boiling, color-melting crowd.

_"Her heart--is given him, with all its love and truth . . . She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of . . ."_

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For a long time, she sat still in her seat, almost inhumanely motionless. Her hair hung down on either side of her face, hiding her. She could be a runaway, a drug dealer, a knocked up college kid, a wife fleeing from an abusive husband. No one knew and no one asked because no one really cared. They walked by, seeing her but not truly seeing her, and went to their own seats.

Rory Gilmore, however, was not running away this time. Her fingers were wrapped securely around the edges of _The Subsect_, and for the first time in many days she was allowing herself that peaceful feeling of happiness in its most tranquil form. It didn't matter that the man who sat next to her smelled funny or had Cheeto dust all over his holey shirt. It didn't matter that the traffic was bad and the bus driver was worse, in a horrible mood, yelling at whoever might manage to capture his attention. Because she had _The Subsect_, and she had its author, whether he was with her at the moment or not.

Her heart fluttered nervously when she thought of him, but it was more of the innocent nervousness than the pained dread mixed with desire that had filled her body for two years now. It was that same feeling she'd had when she was seventeen, a feeling that she'd always thought had something to do with her inexperience and age at the time because she had never gotten it again, but now she realized it was Jess, no matter what age, no matter what year, no matter how or where or why.

"Where're you going?" The man suddenly grunted, scratching his chin with a thick finger. She swallowed heavily, her private thoughts interrupted, and turned to glance once more out the window before looking back to her right.

"Hartford," she said vaguely, unwilling to give detailed information to a person who appeared to have been sleeping it off for the last week or so. However, she couldn't ignore him. It just wasn't in her to do something like that, to judge someone and then write them off without getting to know them. Her mother always complained about that.

"Do you go to school there?"

Although she really wanted to quit this conversation and sink back into her thoughts that resembled a conference analyzation, as well as immerse herself in the book that was felt like it was literally burning holes through her fingertips, she politely and evasively responded, "No, not anymore."

"Ah." There was a long pause and, thus freed from socializing, her mind instantly was back in Philadelphia like it had never really left, wandering the hallways of the publishing house and basking in the familiarity, the _Jessness_, of his bedroom. How it almost, _almost_, felt like home, and how the restless look in his eyes had, if not vanished, at least dimmed, how he was so careful with her, the side of him that no one else knew about, the side of him that was all hers. That made her shiver.

They might not last. He might not last. He might change his mind that afternoon, and decide he wasn't going to throw himself back into that mess that they had created, the physical tensions and sarcastic banter and sultry kisses. He could just take off again, fade into oblivion, and she would be left behind, safely enclosed in the walls of Yale University with her blood pounding against her veins and every muscle in her body screaming for escape. It could happen. It had happened before.

But it wouldn't happen this time. She closed her burning eyelids and she knew it, knew it with a conviction that nearly killed her and seemed almost religious. They had both grown up, both of their souls had mingled to the point where abrupt separation was no longer possible. She took a deep breath and the fear that was in her stomach was suddenly gone, because she knew that in a few hours a number would scroll across her caller ID and it would be his.

Maybe she'd never know him completely, maybe he would always contain the mazes and twisting, tangled paths that she couldn't navigate down, a whole other region of his mind opening when she finally thought she'd mapped it all out. But she _needed_ that. She needed the challenge, the way he faced off with her, the way he touched her with hands like down feathers and bruised her lips with kisses like lightning. It was an actual ache.

She was just opening the book with fluttering fingers when the man spoke again. "I read that," he said with a heavy sigh as he shifted in his seat and changed positions. She felt her heart skip a beat and glanced back down at the cover in front of her.

"You read _this_?"

_This is what he wants. Forget the intellects, the critics, the professors, the philosophers_, she thought, surveying the world-weary man with new eyes that had finally been unbandaged, that could see almost the way he had always seen, understand the truth he somehow possessed but had always danced elusively from her fingertips. _This is what he wants._

"Yeah. It's a helluva book. Helluva author. Real upfront, to the point, cut the shit, you know?" He asked, running a hand idly over his three-or-four day stubble and not knowing that every word he was saying was twisting Rory's heart.

"Amazing author," she whispered, and her body began to throb with the tender hope of going back to something that she had been disconnected from for far too long.

He nodded as she opened the cover, her eyes full with crystal tears that stood motionless on her each eyelash, and then, once she read the quote from _Leaves of Grass _that the precise, focused handwriting seared in her memory had written on the first page, they spilled over silently down her cheeks.

"_O I have been dilatory and dumb;  
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;  
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.  
I will leave all, and come make the hymns of you.  
__As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you,  
__I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you."_

The man said nothing as she cried.

_The End of Redemption_


End file.
